Little One
by TarynWanderer
Summary: The misadventurous story of Mouse. Now Complete, Beta'd, and Reformatted
1. Chapter One

This is an Alternate Timeline. Deal with it.  
  
Little One  
The hills find peace, armed guards locked post  
  
Safe from the screams of the children born as ghosts,  
  
Gates guns and alarms, shape the calm of the dawn,  
  
Peering down into the basin where death lives on.  
  
-Rage Against the Machine "Born as Ghosts"  
  
Prologue  
  
Neo crouched on the ledge of the skyscraper, staring endless stories to the darkness below. Neon light splashed off the rain-slicked concrete. Sirens were heard in the distance, nearly drowned by the sounds of Toronto's lively Yonge Street. Buzzing neon signs flashed, advertising various wares, while a troupe of street performers played on despite the rain. Homeless huddled in doorways, wrapped in ragged blankets. A group of lively young girls squealed as they ran down the street towards Queen's, to meet their favourite of any number of teenybopper boy bands.  
  
But Neo saw none of this. He saw only the shining black concrete waiting below him. He glanced behind him, at the empty skyscraping slick rooftop. The sounds of clanging metal. They'd be here soon.  
  
Neo pulled out the infallible black flip-phone. "Tank, I need an exit. Now!"  
  
"I'm working on it," Came the exasperated response. "There's a payphone down the street a ways. Just follow those girls."  
  
"What.on the ground?" Back in the real world, Tank was smirking at the naiveté in Neo's voice, still sticking around after weeks out of the Matrix.  
  
"Yeah. Just jump it, dude."  
  
The line went dead. Neo stared in mild disbelief at the phone for a while. "Christ." he muttered as he glanced over the edge of the building. It's not real.it's not real.there is no spoon, there is no spoon, there is no spoon.the well used mantra ran through his head countless times as he stepped back and gathered his strength.  
  
What strength? He thought angrily to himself. This isn't even here. It's all in your head. You could be friggin' Superman if you wanted to. Just jump it, man!  
  
The agents were getting closer. If he were on the ground with all those people he'd be dead in a minute. He tracked the girls with his eyes until scant seconds later he saw the phone Tank must have been talking about. He groaned, hating jumping. He hated it. Hated it. Taking a breath and backing up, he gained quick speed and let himself fall.  
  
"There is no spoon, there is no spoon, there is no spoon."  
  
Neo willed himself to slow down, willed his mind to stop the 'world' where it was. Slowly, gracefully, his heel connected with the concrete softly. 'Reality' was restored and he stumbled slightly, before standing still and realizing that he'd done it. "I did it." He whispered, still slightly wondering why he hadn't falling into a Neo-shaped hole like the first time. "I did it!" Neo raised his fists in innocent triumph. Then *pow*, he was on the ground, flat on his face. "Mother fucker." He muttered as he warily stood, clutching his now bleeding nose.  
  
"Oh! Sorry man." The boy on the skateboard that had carelessly knocked him over helped him up. "Guess I was goin' too." The boy's words were cut off by gagging as the shape of the irrepressible Agent Smith morphed into his body.  
  
"Christ." There were times when Neo sincerely hated his new life, be him the One or not. And this was one of those times. He ran like he had never run before, well, maybe a couple of times before, until he reached the furiously ringing payphone.  
  
He grabbed the receiver with a bloody hand and spun to observe one of the street performers gag and shift into the Agent's form. Cradling the receiver between his face and shoulder, he put another hand out on the booth's glass, in one last pathetic attempt to stop his enemy.  
  
And disappeared.  
  
Chapter One  
  
Nobody's real, but they're willing to let you know  
  
Nobody's real, but they're willing to know  
  
Nobody's real, but they're not willing to let you go  
  
Nobody's real, but they feel it.  
  
- Powerman 5000, "Nobody's Real"  
  
Back in the real world.  
  
"Mother fucker!" Neo screamed when Switch removed the terminal from the back of his head. His hands went to his face, cradling the bloody mass.  
  
"Watch it," Switch muttered, casting a glance at where Mouse sat on another terminal seat, rolling his eyes.  
  
"Why can't I do it? Why the hell can' t I do it?" Neo was infuriated at himself. He threw a pleading glance at Mouse. "You can do it. Why can' t I?"  
  
"Don't go so hard on yourself." Tank spoke up from the master terminal. "You've only been out here a few weeks. Mouse's lived here his entire life."  
  
Neo didn't appear to hear this as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Hey, where'd you go after that newsstand? I couldn't find you."  
  
Mouse glanced up at Neo, his frail, sallow face pale. "Oh, I." The boy shrugged. "I got beat around a bit before I found a payphone."  
  
"Bull!" Tank grinned. "You were looking at Playboys at that newsstand, weren't ya?"  
  
Mouse feigned his best, innocent, "who, me?" look, which needless to say, wasn't very good.  
  
"Alright. Whatever," Switch finished up with the last of the terminal cords and stepped over to wear Tank was sitting. "Let's go get something to eat. We need to review the plans for next week."  
  
"Be there in a sec." Mouse remained reclined lazily on the terminal seat, staring intently at his right hand while Neo joined the others and left. The boy sighed, staring at his frail pale fingers. "Unlimited tasteless runny mush. Try to hold me back."  
  
Mouse slid off the terminal and made his way into the darkness of the Nebuchannezer. Before he got too far, however, the ships wide-framed captain stepped out of the shadows and nearly knocked the boy down.  
  
"Jesus fu-" Mouse stopped himself. Morpheus hated it when Mouse swore. "Uh.hey."  
  
The big man smiled down at him. "Mouse. It seems like I have been neglecting you as of late. Since Neo came aboard."  
  
Mouse made a face and shrugged. He really hadn't noticed any difference.  
  
"I trust you're doing well in your classes." Morpheus and Mouse strode down the cool dark corridor.  
  
"What classes?" Mouse muttered under his breath. Switch and Apoc had taught him all they could about hydroponics, he spent most of his programming classes with Tank trying to break into Dozer's moonshine, and.and he had a hard time remembering when he had last had a productive session with Cypher. "Yeah. I guess."  
  
The two walked on in silence for a moment. Eventually Morpheus got to the point Mouse knew he was leading up to.  
  
"I was watching you in the Matrix today."  
  
"Oh yeah?" Mouse replied. When are you not? He thought in a flash of unexpected angst.  
  
Morpheus turned and looked down, regarding the pale, sunken face of the emaciated young teenager before him. "I was disappointed.you left Neo alone with the Agents."  
  
Mouse's face clouded. He didn't meet Morpheus' eyes. "I.I couldn't fight an Agent. You know that." He slowly looked up at the man who had raised him. "You-you told me never to go up against an Agent. Neo told me to run away."  
  
"Nonetheless. You should know better than to leave a teammate to the mercy of Agents. Especially Neo. We need him. He's-"  
  
"Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before."  
  
The two had now stopped outside the mess hall. Morpheus still regarded Mouse, unmoving. Mouse sighed, feeling one of those "attitude" lectures coming on, but Morpheus remained silent as he opened the heavy mess hall doors.  
  
Thick white gruel was practically the only sustenance Mouse had known for twelve years. Occasionally, when the Predator docked with the Nebuchadnezzar, the ship's captain and an old friend of Morpheus, Jolix, would come aboard. He always gave Mouse chocolate, rare, expensive, tiny bits of chocolate. Mouse had had chocolate in the Matrix before, hell, he'd had every type of drugs he had managed to get his hands on as well, but it wasn't nearly the same. For one thing, he knew it was fake and that took the fun right out of it. Another thing, it being in his head and him knowing it was fake, it was hard to get high or drunk and almost impossible to get addicted. Oh, he could be psychologically addicted, but him knowing that it was only psychological would cancel that out. Almost. Mouse had never been addicted so he couldn't know.  
  
But he knew he liked chocolate. And he'd much rather have chocolate right now than the eggy mulch he was trying to force down his throat.  
  
He sat silently, as he usually did, watching the others and occasionally interjecting his own narrow opinion. Mostly, though, he watched Switch and Apoc. He sat up on the counter, she on the bench, leaning on the counter between his legs. Apoc had his arm around her in comfortable, casual familiarity. Occasionally she'd look up at him and smile, and they'd share a sweet, chaste, kiss. Mouse, at one point, might have thought it was nice, but his mind immediately went and took that information and got busy writing porno flicks set to a heavy techno backbeat. So much as one can write a porno flick with a heavy techno backbeat.  
  
Mouse sighed and looked back at his food. Vaguely, briefly, he wondered, in the still innocent and naïve part of his mind, if he would ever find the sort of companionship that Switch and Apoc had found in each other. The other part of his mind, the jaded, cynical one, seriously doubted it.  
  
Pulling the spoon slowly out of his mouth, scraping the mush off with his tongue, Mouth stole a glance at where Neo sat, huddled in a blanket, feebly feeding himself. A small, unwelcome twinge of jealousy ran through him as Morpheus sat talking with the One, and once again, he felt just a little out of place.  
  
Stifling a yawn and excusing himself, Mouse went off to bed, early for a change.  
  
--  
  
Neo couldn't sleep. The young man rubbed a hand over his newly bald head, sighing shakily. In addition to his swollen, achy nose, he had spent the last few hours staring tiredly and unblinking at the metal ceiling in his small room.  
  
Three weeks aboard the Nebuchadnezzar had taken it's toll on Neo- he often just worried about himself, his new friends, and his future as the "One."  
  
The One.what did that even mean? Even in Neo's lifelong search for the truth behind the Matrix, he had never seen himself destined for greatness. He wasn't sure he wanted to be destined for greatness. After much deliberation, as well as impatient tossing and turning, Neo had resolved to take a long, much-needed walk around the cold corridors of the Nebuchadnezzar.  
  
Shying away from the cockpit, where he knew Cypher would be skulking with a jug of killer moonshine, he wandered around the damp hallways below deck.  
  
Whimpering sobs emanated from one of the closed portals.  
  
Neo stopped and looked up in surprise. Glancing around to see if anyone was in the corridor with him, he took a step closer to the sealed metal door.  
  
"No!" Mouse's distressed voice floated out.  
  
"Mouse?" Neo called through the thick portal wall.  
  
"No, leave me alone!" A scream now, in a childish, thickly accented voice that was still strikingly similar to Mouse's.  
  
"Cypher! Trinity!" Neo called down the corridor for someone to hear him, quickly releasing a catch on the door and sliding it open.  
  
Mouse was on his bed, hard to see as he was still fully clothed with the black toque on his head. His sheets were twisted around his feet implying a rage-ful struggle had ensued. Mouse, curled up into himself with arms wrapped tightly, shuddered and sobbed as light was cast into the room.  
  
"Damn you, no!" The boy cried again, more pitifully than angry.  
  
"Mouse?" Neo reached out a tentative hand to the quaking boy.  
  
Mouse slapped it away murderously, not meeting Neo's eyes, with strength that Neo would not have guessed the boy possessed.  
  
"What is it? Is he having a nightmare?" Trinity came into the room. "No, don't touch him!" She called as Neo reached for Mouse again.  
  
"What? Why not?" Neo stood as Mouse flinched and moaned on his bed.  
  
"I've already called for Morpheus- just make sure he doesn't hurt himself!" Trinity lurched forward as Mouse suddenly tried to dash from the room, sending him backwards and into the other wall, where he fell and sobbed, flinching.  
  
"Well what's the matter with him?"  
  
"He has nightmares sometimes- he'll only let Morpheus in right now. All we can do is wait," Trinity let out a breath at Neo's side. The two could only watch the shuddering, sobbing boy sadly until Morpheus arrived.  
  
"Mouse? Are you alright, little one?" Morpheus brushed right past Neo and Trinity to come to kneel by the child he dwarfed in size. He, too, reached out to touch Mouse, who flinched away and struck at him, too, shrieking. "Mouse, shh, it's alright, it's me," Ignoring the blindly thrown fists, the big man wrapped his arms around the skinny, sobbing boy, and whispered endearments.  
  
Eventually Mouse stopped kicking and screaming and relaxed in Morpheus' arms, opening his sunken eyes and staring up at him. "M-Morpheus?"  
  
"Yes, little one."  
  
Tears still streaming down the shaking boy's face, Mouse looked over at Trinity and Neo, the latter who stood staring unashamedly and concerned.  
  
"Oh, Jesus fuck." Mouse started crying anew, ashamed that his new hero should see him in this state, and buried his face in Morpheus' broad chest.  
  
"Morpheus, is there anything-" Neo attempted to offer.  
  
"No, Neo, but thank you for trying." The big man's deep voice rumbled through the cool, damp air in the small room.  
  
"Come on, Neo," Trinity patted him on the shoulder and left, Neo trailing after her.  
  
Mouse did not look up from where he rested his head.  
  
"Are you alright now?" The boy nodded his head against Morpheus' chest, silently.  
  
"Do you want to talk about it?" Every time, the same concerned query, and every time, the same silent, shuddering shake of the head felt against his chest.  
  
"Do you want me to stay with you?" Mouse nodded his head again, taking shaky deep breaths. Morpheus stood and went to sit on the boy's bed, still holding his young charge in a protective clutch.  
  
Eventually, the sobs evened out into long, deep breaths and Mouse fell asleep in his guardian's arms. 


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two  
Jolene heard her father's uneven snore  
  
Right then she knew there must be something more  
  
Jolene heard the singing in the forest  
  
She opened the door quietly and stepped into the night.  
  
-Cake, 'Jolene'  
  
You like him, don't you? You like watching him.  
  
Trinity sat in the core, watching the matrix coding scroll down the black screens all around her. The monotonous hum of the tech gear brought back Cypher's words, and the memory of herself sitting at this very spot watching Neo in his never-ending search for the Matrix.  
  
Trinity thought of Neo now, who was currently helping Switch and Apoc in the kitchen, tending to the little hydroponically grown vegetables and other feeble crops. His hair had grown out enough to almost warrant a cut, now. Trinity allowed herself a small smile as she pictured herself doing that task for him, blowing tiny remnants of hair off the back of his neck-  
  
"Forget it, Trinity. Just forget it," She told herself aloud. The Oracle had, however politely, made it clear that to love Neo was to seal his fate. Trinity hopefully clung to the Oracle's perpetual ambiguity, believing that she meant something entirely different to Trinity's interpretation. But there are only so many ways you can interpret that.  
  
So Trinity had resigned herself to not admitting her feelings, at least for now, and finding someone else to be the One.  
  
Funny- Trinity, and indeed, everyone around her, had always seen herself to be incredibly strong and confident. But when it came to Neo, it seemed she had trouble even being honest with herself.  
  
Turning back to the green code in front of her, Trinity placed her attention back on Denmark- well, the Denmark of the Matrix. Astral, the young hacker she had been watching and, well, baiting for the last little while wasn't looking anymore- dammit! She had been so close. Almost as close as Neo had been- if she had only remained five more minutes.  
  
A soft clanging of boots on metal caught her attention as Mouse entered the core- looking, as he always did now, a little worse for wear. Poor kid- he slept badly, if at all, and the nightmares were worse than ever now- he refused to talk to anyone about them. Even to her.  
  
"Everything ready?" He asked, faking a grin at Trinity.  
  
"Five minutes ago," Trinity replied. "She's no longer online."  
  
"Well, that doesn't matter," Mouse showed a familiar flash of self- confidence. "I can still find her. Astral trusts me."  
  
"Well then hurry up. Get in." Trinity helped Mouse plug himself in, wondering at the fact that they had found a private moment in which to do this- of course, if Morpheus found out, he'd have a fit. But the big man no longer hovered around Mouse like a mother hen, he had a new charge to do that to. Trinity wasn't sure if Mouse appreciated the burden of independence he had been given or resented Neo's new place onboard.  
  
"Tank's coming, right?" Mouse asked from his terminal as Trinity walked back to the construct.  
  
"He should be- he'll call you when everything's in place. I'll call you if something goes wrong."  
  
Mouse flourished another cheeky grin before his eyes shot back in his head and he woke up in the white room.  
  
--  
  
"And I also got these pants at the Gap, and they only cost me a hundred and fifteen crowns." Greta modelled her new clothes for her unimpressed big sister Astral, whom she called Astrid.  
  
In Karrebaeksminde, Denmark, their mother had left the two girls alone for the night while she visited a family friend. Astral had been contented to sit in front of her computer, doing countless searches with a bag of chips, until her sister, who didn't like to be alone, forced her down to look at her new clothes.  
  
"You shouldn't shop at the Gap," Astral mumbled. In Danish, of course.  
  
"Why not?" Greta whined. She really hated Astral sometimes.  
  
"Because no corporate empire should be built on the backs of children."  
  
"Well I don't care who makes them, they look cool and they last." Greta replied, indignantly.  
  
"Well, yeah, they don't pay those kids two crowns a week for nothing, you know." Astral said as she stood up, turning to leave.  
  
"That's just 'cause you don't know how to dress!" Greta pointed an accusing finger at Astral's mostly second-hand non-thrift clothes, and her short pink hair, put back in huge slanted spikes.  
  
"Whatever," Astral began to climb the stairs. Well, back to the elusive Matrix for her.  
  
"Wait! Astrid! Come back, pay attention to me!" Astral sighed and turned, mentally preparing herself for what was to come next.  
  
"This is so boring!" Greta complained. "Take me out, will you? I want to go somewhere. I want to go to a rave!"  
  
"There aren't any raves going on in Karrebaeksminde," Astral said dryly.  
  
"Bull! You've been to raves, why can' t I go?"  
  
"Because every time I went to a rave, it wasn't in Karrebaeksminde." Astral sighed, knowing how to get her sister off her case. "Besides, raves are going out."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I read it in a magazine. Raves were in the out list."  
  
"I don't believe you!" Greta, always so assured in her hip-ness, crossed her arms. "Show me."  
  
"Fine," Astral came back down the stairs and grabbed a magazine, flipping a few pages. Now she very rarely read teen magazines, but she was glad in this instance. Sure enough, under 'out' was the word 'rave'.  
  
"Dammit!" Greta cried. Astral really hated being alone with her sister. "Why does everything bad have to happen to me? Take me out anyway, Astrid."  
  
"Where? You wanna go to the McDonald's?"  
  
"It's Karrebaeksminde! I fucking hate Karrebaeksminde!"  
  
"Whatever," Astral went upstairs to her room, to where her computer sat idle. She usually spent time like this searching for the Matrix, but there was only so much her attention span could take. She collapsed on her bed and thought.maybe the Matrix was just a myth, a rumour among the world of the bored and geeky. Astral reasoned with herself that if she did live in Copenhagen, instead of little Karrebaeksminde, she wouldn't bother looking for the Matrix- she'd have too much other stuff to do.  
  
She stretched her arms out behind her head and thought of Mouse, whom she had met barely a month earlier. Of course Astral had her reservations about meeting people she had met online, but Mouse had become a key player early on in her search for the Matrix. She liked him, though. Looked a little like Lee Evans. He didn't speak Danish, and she didn't know where he lived- if he even lived anywhere. He'd always just appear, usually at Karrebaeksminde's little train station, and call her. Or he'd find her online. Astral, of course Mouse was the only one who knew her as Astral, wondered where he was right now.  
  
A few stones bounced off her window and Astral sat up, listening. A few more pebbles were thrown and she went to open her window.  
  
"Astrid!" A boy called from the ground. Her friend Inger stood there, staring up at her, his face covered in blood.  
  
"Inger!" She cried when she saw him. "What the hell happened?"  
  
"My parents found out about Sören." Inger sobbed, one of his eyes swollen shut.  
  
"Oh shit." Fucking town! Astral thought. She still maintained that if they lived in Copenhagen, a guy like Inger could have loads of boys. Sadly, though, he lived in Karrebaeksminde with his highly judgmental and abusive parents, and all he had was Sören, who treated him about the same way his parents did, in Astral's opinion. As an added bonus, he lived in Copenhagen.  
  
"I'm running away. I decided I couldn't take them anymore, I need to be with Sören. I'm going to Copenhagen." Inger sounded more determined than Astral had ever heard him.  
  
"The fuck you are! I'm coming with you," Astral disappeared back into her room.  
  
"What? Astrid, no!"  
  
She appeared back at the window, stuffing a backpack with a few things. "Like I'd let you go alone, Inger, you'd never survive. I'll just take you there, make sure you get to Sören safely, okay?" She shrugged on a coat.  
  
"But you can't, Astrid! What about your sister and mother?"  
  
"Who cares about my sister? Besides, I'm coming back. I'm not going to go missing on them." She tossed down a cloth to Inger. "Here, clean yourself up. Do you even have any money?"  
  
Inger sighed. "Well, no, not as such. Do you?"  
  
Astral turned off the lights in her room and started to climb down a rainspout. "I've been saving up for a new hard drive, I've got a huge wad of cash."  
  
"I can't let you spend that," Inger said as Astral took him by the arm.  
  
"Shut up, Inger, you're more important than that. Come on." The two broke off in a run towards the train station.  
  
--  
  
The phone rang. Greta, who was busily engrossed in Top of the Pops, answered absently.  
  
"Hallo?"  
  
"Astral?"  
  
Greta stopped. Of course she didn't know an Astral, but North American boys never called her- they always called Astrid, especially in the middle of the night, and though Greta would never admit it, she was furiously jealous.  
  
"No, but I'm sure I can be just as much fun," She answered in English.  
  
A confused silence. "Can I speak to Astral, please?"  
  
"There's no Astral here. There's my sister Astrid if that's what you mean."  
  
"Could I speak to Astrid then, please?"  
  
Greta sighed. "Yeah, sure, just a second." Greta stormed up to Astrid's room and opened the door rudely. "Astrid, phone." she trailed off, seeing the room dark and empty. Picking up the phone plugged in there.  
  
"I'm sorry, Astrid's not-" She sighed and hung up when she realized that no one was on the other line.  
  
--  
  
At Karrebaeksminde Central, Mouse had hung up when a familiar figure came running down the street with someone else.  
  
"Astral!" Mouse ran forwards towards her and they hugged, spinning in the dying Danish light. Mouse let her down and looked at the young man standing behind her, shyly, his shirt stained in blood.  
  
"Who's.who's this?"  
  
Speaking in English. "Oh this! Inger, this is Mouse, Mouse, this is Inger. He's my best friend." Inger, whose English was surprisingly not very good, bit his lip and stared at the ground. Astral looked back and forth between the two. "I'm taking him to Copenhagen."  
  
"Copenhagen?" Mouse looked up from where his eyes had been trained on Inger. "But Astral.I only brought two passes- for us."  
  
"You brought passes? You were going to ask me to Copenhagen?" Astral beamed at the boy.  
  
"Well.yeah. Astral, I.it's important. We have to go tonight." Mouse was in all seriousness.  
  
"Well that's all good and well, but Mouse, I've gotta take care of Inger. I'll pay his way."  
  
"But Astral-"  
  
"Inger's my best friend, Mouse. He comes before everything. Everything." She punctuated that last word and Mouse sighed.  
  
"'Kay, fine. But I can't be held responsible if he sees anything he's not supposed to see." Mouse couldn't even feign anger at Astral's grin.  
  
A lumbering red train pulled in, right on time. The three piled in and started their relatively short ride to Copenhagen.  
  
--  
  
"Sören!" Inger cried as the dingy apartment door opened. The boy threw his arms around the big blond man's neck, who took him in a crushing hug. Astral took a step back from the man, whom she hated with a passion.  
  
He caught her eye over Inger's shoulder, and looked up at her, condescending. "Astrid." He said bitterly.  
  
"Sören." She replied.  
  
Sören turned to look at Mouse, up and down. "And who's this tasty little morsel?" He asked in Danish, fortunately for Mouse.  
  
"Just a guy. Leave him alone." Astral spat at Sören. "Inger, if you're all fine here, I'll be off."  
  
"Okay, but.oh, Astrid, where are you going to go?" Inger stood in the doorway, Sören's huge frame behind him.  
  
"I'll be fine.I think. Maybe I'll go back home. Besides, I have something I have to take care of with Mouse. Take care, Inger, okay?" Astral worried about her friend.  
  
"I will, Astrid. Keep in touch." Inger stepped forward and gave her a quick hug, before falling back into Sören's possessive hold.  
  
Mouse's cellphone rang.  
  
"Mouse," He answered.  
  
"We're ready to go," Tank's voice replied from the real world. "Everything in place there?"  
  
"Yeah, we'll be there in a few minutes."  
  
Mouse and Astral walked down the dark streets of Copenhagen, under flags and closing shops, stickers that said in English "Copenhagen Gay Life Welcomes You!" as they left Sören's building.  
  
"Do you know where we're going?" Astral asked as she followed Mouse, weaving past people who made their way through the narrow cobblestone streets.  
  
"Yeah, don't worry about it." Mouse flashed her a cheeky grin. "I know exactly where we're going, exactly."  
  
"Mouse, wait." Astral stopped and the boy turned to her. "Is this it? Like really it?"  
  
"It is. If you're ready for it." He grinned again. "Here's one word of advice. Don't lie. She knows more about you than you can imagine."  
  
"She?" Astral and Mouse started off again.  
  
"Yeah. Trinity." 


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three It's so hard to know the children these days. They all seem- what? Older  
than their years, I suppose.  
  
So many of the children just don't seem like children anymore.  
  
It's almost as if there are things in their minds they don't want you to  
know.  
  
-from John Saul's "The God Project"  
  
Astral woke up in pain. Thrashing like a newborn in the goo that threatened to choke her, drown her, she struggled to sit up and gasped for air. Her lungs hurt. She registered something about a yellowish cocoon, and countless others like it, and black painful tubes and drips imbedded in her flesh. Astral worked blindly, subconsciously, ripping the offenders out. Now the big one in the back of her head- she stopped and gasped, stunned, at the great spidery metal creature that hovered over her, now. Astral felt a fear she had never felt before grip her, tightly, and tried to scream, but her throat hurt too much and her chords were too tight- it came out as a small screech.  
  
Then the horrible, sticky pain of something sliding out of the back of her head, and she fell, sliding, like she was drowning, down an endless black tube, and naked into the murky waters below.  
  
--  
  
Mouse and Trinity sat on a hard metal bench in the kitchen, wordless. Mouse seemed to find his feet strangely enthralling. Trinity leaned against the wall, her arms crossed. Morpheus stood in front of them, leaning against the counter. He was like that- no matter what, Morpheus carried about this serenity and stillness wherever he went. When Morpheus was truly angry or disappointed he would adopt this frighteningly calm quality. Sometimes you wouldn't even know he was in the room, watching, quietly judging, until he spoke.  
  
Scared the hell out of Mouse.  
  
"Can't I at least see her?" Mouse dared to break the deafening silence. Beside him, Trinity drew in a sharp breath.  
  
Morpheus didn't respond. Instead, he slowly shifted his gaze from the wall behind them to Mouse's sunken face.  
  
"Ooohkay." Mouse muttered under his breath. Back to stare at his shoes.  
  
Needless to say, Morpheus had been more than a little displeased when he discovered Astral's sputtering, writhing body in the infirmary, Apoc and Dozer working on her silently, apologetic glances occasionally shooting up to the ship's captain. Mouse admitted that he hadn't really thought this far ahead in the game plan. It appeared that neither had Trinity, or she was leaving that to him. A little amused, she watched the panic set into Mouse's face. Learning experience or some other manipulative bull crap she would call it.  
  
"Astral is still resting. It will take her awhile to get over the shock. Longer than it took Neo. She wasn't ready." The disapproval was apparent in Morpheus' quiet voice.  
  
"When Apoc is done with her you can see her. I suggest you have an apology in mind. It's quite a scare for one to lose everything she knows unprepared."  
  
Mouse had an angry, irrational thought about losing his own family, one he couldn't remember. He pushed it out of his head before his mouth could form a sarcastic come-back.  
  
"I somehow managed to convince Jolix to take her aboard." Morpheus' glare, if at all possible, deepened Mouse's shame.  
  
Wait a minute.why should I be sorry?  
  
"He'll be here in two weeks. It will probably be traumatizing to switch ships so quickly like that."  
  
Oh, shut up, you.  
  
Morpheus quirked an eyebrow, as if hearing Mouse's thoughts. The boy gulped.  
  
"Go to your cabin, Mouse. I'll be there shortly."  
  
Mouse stared up at his captain apprehensively, and shot a pleading look at Trinity. When she offered no forthcoming help, he sighed and stood up, walking out of the mess and down the dark metal corridor nervously.  
  
The big dark man then turned solemnly to Trinity who sat serenely still, staring back at him. The two freedom fighters regarded each other for a moment. Trinity was the one Morpheus probably knew best of all his crew, with the possible exception of Tank and Dozer. She was only Mouse's age, perhaps a little younger, when he had picked her up, a frightened, angry young girl from the rural slums of Argentina.  
  
Now the big man sighed and leaned against the counter, tilting his head slightly to the side. Trinity's look was identical to his.  
  
"I'm not going to pretend to know why you assisted Mouse on his little adventure." Mopheus swallowed the truth. He knew Trinity had been acting on some undisciplined, impulsive protective feeling, much like he had done some twenty years ago.  
  
Trinity pulled her feet up and rested her hands on her knees, much like Morpheus often did when he was waiting for some response or action.  
  
"What am I going to do with you?" Morpheus asked, no one in particular.  
  
Trinity didn't break her gaze from Morpheus'.  
  
"What am I going to do with him?"  
  
--  
  
Mouse always found it surreal in Apoc's makeshift infirmary. The way the blinding white light leaked up from one side to be swallowed up by the impending darkness. He stood a little apprehensively by the end of the room, leaning against the doorframe.  
  
Only a few days had passed since Astral had been ripped out from the 'safe, warm' life she had known before the real world. Mouse had seen her a little earlier that day, when he, Tank and Dozer helped the girl start to re-learn to walk. Now he was bringing her some semblance of a supper, the way Neo and Trinity did when he would fall ill. And Mouse fell ill a lot. Morpheus told him that he was unusually sickly as a child.  
  
Astral stirred from her restless slumber and blinked deep, dark eyes at him from inside her plastic-bordered cot. She grinned, at least her smile hadn't changed, and effortlessly pulled herself into a sitting position, with more than a little pride.  
  
"How have you been?" Mouse asked as he stepped forward with his offering- some more of that flavourless mush, a dark mug of water, and a few slices from a small, feeble tomato. Despite being there to help her re-learn the things she thought she once knew, Mouse didn't get to see Astral a lot- since Morpheus' decree that all his spare time be eradicated for a month. He actually had a curfew placed on him, much earlier than he thought suited him, and all of his waking time was taken up by some lesson or chore he never thought needed to be done. Complete restriction from the Matrix for a month, and the white room for two weeks. Pretty much all the fun in his mundane little existence had been taken away.  
  
"Ah, a feast," Astral had adapted to her new life a lot quicker than anyone had expected her too, showing gratefulness for whatever nourishment she could get, and genuine delight at a feeble treat like a real vegetable.  
  
"How have you been?" Mouse asked again, placing the small fare before her and seating himself on a swivel chair close by.  
  
"Been better," She admitted, running a hand over her bald scalp, a little bit of peach fuzz starting to show. "I kinda miss my hair. Kinda really miss it." Mouse smiled when he remembered when he first saw Astral in that crowded, smoky theatre front. She was short, but her huge slanted bright pink spikes lit the way to her. Everything had been different since then.  
  
"You know, my 'real' hair colour is shit brown." Her bluntness made Mouse chuckle. "And it's got this gross wave thing going on." Astral absently licked the last of her gruel from it's black bowl. "I'm not looking forward to growing it back."  
  
"Maybe your real real hair is different." Mouse offered.  
  
"Hopefully," Astral downed the rest of her metal-tasting water and hugged her legs to her chest. God, she looked so thin. Gaunt was actually probably a better word.  
  
"Feeling a little homesick?" Mouse prompted, seeing the sad confusion on her face.  
  
"Yeah. Stress is starting to get to me." She sighed. "It's all so much to take, you know? And I know it sounds stupid, but the only thing I can really think about is how my friends and family, even though I know they're not actually my friends and family, are taking this. Do they think I'm dead or that I took off or something? I feel so bad about it."  
  
"Don't. It's not stupid. Everyone feels that way." Mouse was staring at his right hand again, studying the pale, frail fingers, absently.  
  
"Did you feel that way at first?"  
  
This caught him off guard. He had never thought of it in terms of himself before.  
  
"You know, I can't remember," He said, the way he usually brushed off questions about his past before. He really couldn't.  
  
"Really? When did you wake up? You're not that much older than me, it mustn't have been that long ago."  
  
Mouse shook his head, as if it were obvious, still staring at his hand. "Nah, I've been here all my life."  
  
Astral didn't say anything. Eventually Mouse looked up at her and saw in her face that she was as confused as ever.  
  
"Look, don't worry about it." He got up and cleared away Astral's tray, drawing the thin white sheets up over her. "It's just the way it is. I must've come out when I was a baby or something. I grew up on the Neb, Morpheus is like my dad. That's just the way it is."  
  
"But you came from the Matrix, right?" Astral leaned back and pulled the sheets around her, settling in for sleep. "Not from Zion?"  
  
"Yeah." Now that he said it all out loud, it did sound a little strange. Other rescued children were fostered on Zion but he remembered being on the ship his entire life.  
  
"Have you ever asked Morpheus?" Astral had her eyes closed, and stifled a yawn.  
  
"Once.he didn't really answer me." He looked down at the once vibrant, energetic young girl drifting into sleep before him. "Well, I won't bother you anymore. G'night."  
  
"Night." Astral muttered as Mouse dropped a chaste kiss on her forehead and stole quietly out of the room.  
  
--  
  
That night, Mouse had another nightmare. Even scarier this time, if possible. And once again, holding the sobbing boy in his small, dank cabin, Morpheus asked him if he wanted to talk about it. And once again, Mouse shook his head no.  
  
How do you talk about an ordeal you don't even know you've been through? What would he tell Morpheus.the darkness, the clinking of chains and the smell of burnt flesh, and the eternal sporadic hum of the sewing machines?  
  
Oh, and the streets- the dusty, crowded streets, sharing a square meter of concrete with seven others like him, children selling garbage bags and pencils and pickpocketing. The mothers crying and begging. The blood, and the pain, and the yelling in some language he didn't understand.  
  
Morpheus would hold him close and tell him to fight back, to face his fears.  
  
What would he do? Tell them to stop beating him, please? In a language he didn't understand? Maybe he could learn it, get it uploaded, if he knew what language it was!  
  
And then he remembered the screams, just some screams of some girls he didn't know, didn't want to know. Girls, underage girls, in an AIDS-ridden brothel, he would know if he weren't so naïve.  
  
So instead he kept it all inside, and shook his head no, and cried into his surrogate father's expansive chest. 


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four  
You hold no place for tears  
  
Leave behind those frozen years  
  
Come with me, and we'll go dreaming  
  
No words, no talk, we'll go dreaming  
  
No pain, no hurt, we'll go dreaming  
  
- BT "Dreaming"  
  
Jolix, the captain of the rebel ship the Predator, was particularly happy today. The jaunty Newfoundlander whistled a happy tune as he walked down the metal corridors to the Predator's construct.  
  
One of his crewmembers, Zelazny, nodded at him as he helped Astral out of her terminal.  
  
"Hey," The captain sat next to her, comfortably. "Did you see yer friend?" It had been two months since the amiable Danish girl had come aboard his ship, and he was very pleased with her process. At her pleading, only two months into her new life, he let her wander into the Matrix alone, under close supervision by Zelazny, their operator, to see her friend Inger.  
  
When Jolix first came out of the Matrix, Morpheus had always taught Jolix that it was never a good idea to associate with people left behind in the Matrix, that it only led to heartbreak. But Jolix couldn't look at Astral worry about her friend without thinking back to the ones he left behind in the St. John's of the Matrix, that he used to stay up late watching through the scrolling green code, wistful, until he eventually learned that it was best to let go. He didn't see the harm in letting her go home for just a little while, just once.  
  
"Yeah," She murmured, noncommittally.  
  
"And?" Jolix prompted.  
  
Astral rubbed at the back of her head, where mousy brown hair was growing quickly. "He's doing good. I suppose. He's happy. Sören.well I never liked Sören, but he's doesn't get as high as much as he used to.apparently he doesn't beat Inger up anymore. Which is good." She sighed. "Inger said that Sören said that he was going to quit just for him, because he loved him that much. 'Course, Inger could be lying. But as long as he's happy, you know?"  
  
Jolix nodded.  
  
"It was so hard not to tell him, you know?" Astral bit her lip, thoughtfully. "But I couldn't tell Inger, he couldn't accept it. It would just put him in danger. The boy can't even work a calculator. He doesn't believe in atoms. And he's afraid of germs." She smiled a sad, ghost of a smile. "I don't know how someone can be both, but he pulls it off."  
  
Jolix smiled and put his arm around her. "I knows it's hard, me girl," He consoled. "But you'll get used to it. We's a resilient species, us, we always do. But I'm here fer you, y'know, if you ever wants ta talk."  
  
Astral smiled up at him, her eyes full of hurt. "Thank you, Jolix."  
  
"Anytime, me girl," He rubbed comforting circles on her back. "But fer now," He got to his feet and faced her. "Cheer up, we're gon' to be havin' a party. And you'll see yer bye. I know you'll like that."  
  
Astral grinned at him, meaning it this time. "Thank you, Jolix."  
  
--  
  
Trinity walked into the Nebuchadnezzer's construct for the first time in two months and it felt great.  
  
"Good of you to join us," Tank spoke up as he watched Switch and Apoc's advancements through the Matrix.  
  
"It's good to be off probation," Trinity stepped towards where the other two way and waited for them to wake up. "And it'll be good to finally get off this damned ship for a few hours."  
  
"I hear you," Tank grinned his huge, charming grin. Every so often, the Nebuchadnezzer would dock alongside their sister ship, the Predator, captained by one of Morpheus' former proteges, Jolix. For his part, Jolix always loved seeing his former captain and his friends on the Neb, and always hosted a kitchen party when the two docked together. Let it never be said that culture wasn't alive anymore, Jolix always found a way to bring a part of Before to Now.  
  
"Where is everybody?" Trinity sat across from Switch's terminal.  
  
"Cypher and Dozer are bottling moonshine to take with us. I think Neo was with them, but I don't think he's real comfortable around Cypher."  
  
"And Mouse?"  
  
Tank looked up at her. "I haven't seen Mouse in days."  
  
--  
  
Mouse's cabin was only a few doors down from Morpheus'. He had spent almost all of that day, and most of his two-month probation from the Matrix and recreation, in there thinking. Thinking about Astral, mostly, and what she had said. Then he would start to think about where he had come from, why everyone else was offered a red pill and blue pill, but he had always just sort of been there.  
  
Before this whole thing had been brought to his attention, Mouse had fleeting thoughts of returning to the Matrix, mostly brought on by Cypher's grumbling. About returning to the ignorant bliss of whatever life he had led.  
  
And now he realized that he didn't even know what sort of life that was.  
  
It was killing him, slowly, the not knowing. Everyone else had a past, even if those pasts were forged- they were still there. Apoc often talked about his home in India, Switch about hers in Russia. Trinity had memories of the orphanage in Argentina, and even Neo still liked to simulate hockey games in the northern Canadian town where he had grown up, or the beaches of Australia where he had lived last. Even Tank and Dozer had Zion to fondly remember.  
  
And Mouse.Mouse had the Neb, he supposed. He could remember a dark, metal, cold, distant.  
  
The boy sighed and pulled his toque down, determinedly. He was going to ask, it was final. He was going to get over his inherent fear of the huge, black man, stop joking around with his cheeky grin and ask.  
  
Mouse entered the uniform dark room on Morpheus' command. The captain was sitting up in the depression by the bed, as always, reading.  
  
Ha. Books. Somehow Morpheus had a small collection of the few books that were left over from Before.  
  
"What is it, Mouse?"  
  
The boy didn't meet Morpheus' gaze as he shut the thick metal door behind him. "Um, Morpheus? Can I ask you something?"  
  
"Of course, little one," The captain dutifully put aside his book and turned to face his charge.  
  
Mouse leaned against the other wall and played with the fraying edges of his sweater. "Uh.I've been thinking.the last little while.and I was..I was sort of wondering." He cleared his throat and looked up at his mentor. Jesus, it had been so easy when he practiced it in his head, what was his problem now?  
  
"What is it, Mouse?" Morpheus asked gently.  
  
"I was.wondering." Mouse bit his lip a moment, before deciding to just blurt it out. "Where do I come from?"  
  
Morpheus was taken aback a little. "Pardon?"  
  
"Where do I come from?"  
  
"Well you come from the Matrix, Mouse, just like the rest of us," The captain smiled, humoring him, and that enraged Mouse even more.  
  
"No! In the Matrix, where do I come from?"  
  
"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean,"  
  
"Dammit, why did everyone else get to choose but me?"  
  
This silenced the big man. The silence hung in the room for a few moments, and Morpheus refused to meet the boy's determined gaze.  
  
"I can't tell you that, Mouse. I want to, but I can't."  
  
"What the fuck do you mean you can't?"  
  
"Mouse," Morpheus said. "Do not swear at me,"  
  
"Just tell me the truth, Morpheus! I need to know, it's killing me!" Mouse stared up at his surrogate father, now standing. "What makes me so different, why can't you tell me?"  
  
"It would kill you to know the truth, Mouse,"  
  
"You always said that we lived to pursue the truth!" Mouse shot back.  
  
"Not this truth, Mouse!" Morpheus yelled back. Mouse stopped and stepped back. "It would hurt you to know this, and it would break my heart to see you hurt."  
  
Mouse stared at the big man who had raised him, thinking about this, before anger overtook him again.  
  
"Fuck you!" He swore at his surrogate father. "I fucking hate you! Just put me back in, then, there's no point in this, is there?"  
  
"Mouse," Morpheus warned.  
  
"Put me back! I hate you! I hate you!"  
  
In all his hormonal teenaged fury, Mouse lashed out at the huge man towering over him with fists, futilely, screaming that he hated him.  
  
When Morpheus had enough and his discipline failed him, he grabbed the frail boy by the shoulders and flung him onto the bed, grasping his shoulders there, he shook him.  
  
"You listen to me, Mouse," Morpheus whispered. "I will never put you back in. I didn't give you a choice because you wouldn't have known better, and you are better off here. I know that you don't believe me, but you are. I will not tell you because you won't be able to handle it. You don't want to know what you had in the Matrix. And I will never, ever put you back in. Do you hear me?" He shook the boy again, and Mouse cringed.  
  
Morpheus immediately released his hold and his anger faded quickly as he saw his young charge rub pathetically at his frail shoulder.  
  
"I'm sorry," Morpheus apologized and left the room, quickly.  
  
He passed Neo in the hall.  
  
"Hey, have you seen-" Neo trailed off as Morpheus briskly walked past him, ignoring him.  
  
After the three had been done loading plastic crates of moonshine into the small hover-shuttle they were using to cross into the Predator, Cypher and Dozer had sent Neo to get Mouse so they could be on their way.  
  
Neo now paused outside the open door and looked inside, seeing Mouse still seated on the bunk, staring into nowhere.  
  
"Hey. You alright?" He asked, sitting next to him. Now that Neo had made his first jump, even though he had failed, he felt more at ease with the rest of the crew.  
  
"I'm.I'm okay. I guess." Mouse responded feebly. He looked up at Neo, eyes shining. "I asked him where I came from,"  
  
Neo paused. The unasked question of Mouse's heritage was always there, but no one really dwelled on it. He had just always sort of been there.  
  
"And?" Neo prompted.  
  
"He wouldn't tell me. Said I couldn't handle it," Mouse made a sort of 'pfft' sound and crossed his arms. "I said I wanted to go back in, 'cause I do sorta, even if just to see what I had, you know?"  
  
Neo shook his head. "Then I guess he was just trying to protect you. I wouldn't want to go back in."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
Neo shrugged. "Wasn't happy. I think partially 'cause I knew there was something bigger. I didn't get along very well with people, kind of antisocial. At least here I can talk to you and Tank. And Trinity."  
  
"Maybe it wasn't like that though. Maybe I had something good. A nice home and stuff."  
  
"Maybe you didn't. Maybe you were a crack baby, or paraplegic. Or maybe you were one of those Romanian orphan babies, who were left alone in their cribs and couldn't interact with people because their senses were deadened."  
  
Mouse glanced at him. "I never thought of that."  
  
Neo shrugged again. "I think he was just trying to protect you. He loves you, you know."  
  
Mouse made another little 'pfft' sound. "He doesn't show it very often."  
  
"You don't think so?"  
  
"No! And I do everything to." Mouse kicked his feet. "You know the Lady in Red, I spent a lot of time on that.he didn't even like it. Said I was letting my hormones control me. You know there's another version of that, with a movie star guy. You don't hear anyone complaining about him!"  
  
Neo sighed. "I know it's tough, what you're going through. It'll pass. I don't think it's even that important, I mean, you're here now and that's all that matters."  
  
Mouse rubbed his face in his hands. "You don't know what it's like to not have a past,"  
  
Neo shrugged. "You'd be surprised." He stood. "Come on. Everyone's waiting for us, let's go."  
  
--  
  
When Mouse entered the Predator's cozy communal area, Astral bounding up and wrapped her arms around his neck, hugging him tight.  
  
"I've missed you," She whispered.  
  
"I've missed you too," He told her. "How have you been doing?"  
  
"Fine, I guess," Astral let go, but still stood a little near to him. "Everyone's really nice here. I'm getting along really well with everyone. But I get homesick a lot."  
  
It didn't seem like she wanted him to respond to that, so he didn't.  
  
Jolix called everyone over to the counter, where he had a few containers set out.  
  
"Got ye all a surprise," He said, opening the lit of one such container. "Sushi!"  
  
"What?" Tank exclaimed as the rest of them murmured. "How the hell did you manage this?"  
  
When the war first started to wage, before the oceans were depleted, large amounts of fish and wildlife were captured and kept, in manufactured environments. Now, there were still a few places in Zion where one could get a slice of beef, although it was often stringy and undernourished, or fish. Such places were rare, and things like sushi were a ridiculously expensive commodity.  
  
Even though the race had tried their best to eradicate it, money still ruled in the Now, and only the lavishly rich could afford to be well fed.  
  
"You just hafta know the right people, and how to charm 'em, me son," Jolix winked at Tank.  
  
"Do you know how to eat sushi?" Astral asked Mouse suddenly, as Jolix doled out the sushi.  
  
"No. Never had it,"  
  
"Then I'll show you," Astral accepted a plate, and Mouse took the two offered bottles of moonshine, and they wandered over to a corner together.  
  
"Okay, you got your soy sauce," Astral said in her delightful accent. "Now you put in some wasabi.not a whole lot, just the tiniest bit." Mouse followed her actions. "Then you dip a piece in, and eat it in one bite."  
  
Mouse stuffed the little roll in and closed his eyes, sighing. Anything, really, was pleasure compared to his usual diet, but this was pure heaven.  
  
"Good?" Astral asked when they were done.  
  
"Oh yeah," Mouse said.  
  
Astral grinned. "One day, God willing, I'll teach you how to eat shrimp Norwegian-like."  
  
Mouse smiled. "And lobster Swedish-style?" Astral nodded. The boy's smile faded as he realized he had nothing to offer this wonderful girl by way of culture, so he took a swig from his bottle.  
  
Astral followed suit, and ended up wincing and choking and spat it out. "Oh Jesus!" She cried. "That's horrible! This'll do the trick quite well."  
  
Mouse grinned. "You just kinda have to throw it back. Don't let it hit your tongue. Or the walls of your throat for that matter." He took another swig, throwing his head back.  
  
Astral followed his example and managed to get it down with minimal gagging. "Woo.it's my new favourite drink," she commented when she felt it hit her brain a few seconds later. "I, uh.went to see Inger today,"  
  
"How is he?"  
  
"He's fine but.he said.he said my family was looking for me. They had the cops out for me and.my sister came to Copenhagen and found where he was.looking for me." Mouse edged forward when he saw the look on Astral's face. "And I couldn't tell him the truth, couldn't tell them the truth." She looked at him. "I just miss them all so much sometimes." Without wanting it, she started to cry. She angrily wiped a few tears away and took another deep drink of Dozer's moonshine.  
  
"Hey," Mouse put an arm around her, and she leaned into his chest. "I know it's tough. Everyone gets like this sometimes. But it'll be okay."  
  
"It just feels like I don't have anyone anymore," She sobbed.  
  
"You got me," Mouse said. He looked at her, and she looked at him, and they kissed, sweetly.  
  
On the other side of the communal room, Neo and Trinity stood talking over their own bottles of moonshine.  
  
"I grew up in Canada," Neo told her. "Northwest Territories. But then I got a scholarship for school in California. Ended up getting a job at an Australian company, and then you guys found me,"  
  
"So you travelled a lot," Trinity said.  
  
"Not really.just those three countries. And except for the local dialects, they're all so similar, it's frightening."  
  
Trinity laughed, a little louder than she usually did. In fact, she didn't laugh much at all.  
  
"What about you?" Neo asked.  
  
"Me? I'm nobody. Grew up in an orphanage outside Buenos Aires, Argentina." Her eyes misted over a little, besides the glossiness they already had taken on due to the moonshine. "Far as I know, my mother was raped by her stepfather when she was eleven and out I came." She sighed.  
  
"So I was never wanted. By anyone. Somehow got my hands on software and eventually came out of the hell the Matrix had deemed it fit to grant me with." She looked away. "And I'm still not wanted."  
  
"Now that's not true-" Neo started, when Trinity leaned forward and grabbed him.  
  
"You want to know something?" Trinity asked.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Tu eres todo para mi," She whispered, and giggled.  
  
"Huh?" Neo asked.  
  
"Do you want to dance?" She asked suddenly.  
  
Seeing as how people in the real world tracked people in the Matrix by use of their own computers, Jolix had also figured out how to get access into those computers. And the culture of Before still lived in the Now- music, visual files, whatever.  
  
A quick-paced, Latin-rock song was playing from the ship's comm system at that moment.  
  
Mouse and Astral stood swaying on the other side of the room, neither really dancing. He ran his hands over her fuzzy scalp and sighed. "I miss your hair, too."  
  
She sighed and laid her head on his shoulder. "I feel so ugly without it,"  
  
"You're not ugly. You're beautiful."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"You are, Astral, to me anyway." He looked down at her. "I learned Danish, you know."  
  
"Oh yeah?" She smiled and lifted her head, holding his gaze.  
  
"De er mere vakker enn en solnedgang," he pronounced clumsily. Astral burst out laughing.  
  
"What?" Mouse was mildly affronted.  
  
"That's Norwegian," Astral explained. She smiled. "But I understood it. Denmark did own Norway at one point. Thank you, Mouse."  
  
"I mean it, Astral."  
  
Her only response was to kiss him full on the lips.  
  
On the other side of the room, Trinity was resting her head on Neo's chest poignantly.  
  
"You are wanted, you know," Neo whispered to her. "I couldn't do this without you."  
  
Trinity didn't respond.  
  
"Will you teach me Spanish?"  
  
"Just upload it," Trinity said.  
  
"I mean right now. Just a few words." He asked. Trinity looked up at him.  
  
"Okay. Say this. Tu eres todo para mi," She repeated what she had said. "La luna, el sol, mi corazon,"  
  
"Tu eres todo para mi," Neo said badly. "La luna, el sol, mi corazon."  
  
Trinity smiled sadly. "Thank you."  
  
"What does that mean?" Trinity had already put her head back down on his chest.  
  
Mouse and Astral were going at it full force when they stopped, and stared into each other's eyes and saw the pain and doubt and fear there.  
  
"Do you wanna go to my cabin?" Astral asked hurriedly. Mouse could only nod.  
  
No one saw them leave.  
  
Trinity suddenly looked up at Neo, and said to him. "Will you say something for me?"  
  
"What?"  
  
She whispered to him "Quiero hacer el amor con tigo,"  
  
He repeated it, and her face lit up. She smiled, then it faded, and she broke their contact. "I'm sorry," Trinity said, turning to go.  
  
"Wait, Trinity," But she was already gone, with no obvious intention for him to follow.  
  
In the darkness of Astral's cabin, the two youngest crewmembers of their respective ships gave in to whatever force was moving them as they lovingly helped each other out of their heavy clothes.  
  
"Is this your first time?" Astral asked, seriously. Mouse nodded, unable to speak. "It's mine, too," She smiled, and she looked beautiful. "I'm glad it's with you."  
  
Away from the party, away from the action, Morpheus sat in the construct with Jolix and told him his problems.  
  
"I think ye should tell 'im," Jolix, who had been there when Mouse was taken out, offered.  
  
"I can't, I.I can't hurt him like that. I can't be the one to do that to him."  
  
"Sounds like you're hurtin' 'im more not telling him, me son," Morpheus' former protégé said. "I think you owe it to him to tell him the truth. Before he finds out for himself."  
  
Morpheus thought this over for a moment, then nodded. "I suppose you're right.but I still feel so horrible about it. I'll tell him when the time is right, when I'm comfortable with it. Not a moment earlier." He looked up at Jolix.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Anytimes, me son."  
  
--  
  
That night, wrapped up in the arms of a beautiful girl, in the darkness of a different cold, impersonal, metal ship, Mouse slept soundly and deeply, for the first time in weeks. 


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five  
I remember falling  
  
I remember marching  
  
Like a one-man army  
  
Through the plains  
  
I know I'm coughing  
  
I believe in something  
  
I don't want to remember falling  
  
For your lies  
  
- Our Lady Peace "One Man Army"  
  
Even though he knew it was fake, the African sun still felt wonderful on Mouse's face. If he didn't know any better, the sweltering heat of Tripoli would have bothered him, but perception is everything. The mind is a wonderful thing, where it goes, the body follows.  
  
Back in the Real World, he had woken up in Astral's arms on the Predator after the party. He disentangled himself carefully and watched her sleeping. God, she was beautiful. Even without her hair, and gaunt and malnourished on Real food of the Now, and in scraggly handed down clothing, she was still beautiful.  
  
He smiled and leaned over and kissed her awake. She fluttered her eyes for a moment and looked lovingly up at him.  
  
"Hi," She smiled coyly.  
  
"Hi," He said. "I.I really loved last night. I.I'm glad it was with you."  
  
"So am I," She whispered back.  
  
Mouse smiled faintly and flushed a bit. "Um, I think I have to go before someone finds me, but.do you want to see me again? 'Cause I know I want to see you again. And again and again. And-"  
  
Astral laughed softly and leaned up to silence him with a kiss. "I would love to see you again. And I would love to do this again with you." She leaned back down into her bunk and smiled up at him. "I'll send you a message, 'kay?"  
  
Of course, she had sent more than one message. The two would message back and forth between the ships for hours on end. Whenever they had a chance, they met in the Matrix. Like now.  
  
"Thanks for doing this for me, by the way." Mouse glanced up at Neo, whose Matrix-Canadian skin was not used to the Matrix-Tripoli sun and was sweating profusely.  
  
"Hey, now problem," Neo responded. "I know Trinity doesn't do these things with you anymore, since last time. I still think you deserve a good time," He smiled and slapped his young friend on the back. Mouse grinned up at him and Neo remembered what it was like to be young and in love. Of course, he hadn't been in love in a long time, back in the Matrix, before Australia. After that he didn't go out much, in his passionate search for the truth about the Matrix. Then he had met Trinity.  
  
And he really didn't know what to do with that. Trinity was so far away, so unobtainable.maybe that's what made her so attractive to him. And obviously, there was something there, due to what she made him say when she was drunk. After that he went and uploaded Spanish, and was too much of a gentleman to bring it up around her.  
  
At least he knew now. Sort of. It's like both of them were too scared to admit anything. He sort of wished he were young now, then there'd be no consequences, no past experiences to make him afraid.  
  
Mouse's face broke into a grin and he ran towards the outdoor café. "Astral!" He ran up to her and hugged the short girl, spinning her around.  
  
Astral took full advantage of the digital projection of her mental self- spiky pink hair, huge shoes and baggy jeans, chains, the works.  
  
"Neo!" Astral cried out after she and Mouse broke their deep kiss. "Haven't seen you in a while. How've you been?"  
  
Their conversation wandered all over the map, but mostly Neo sat back and let the two youngsters enjoy their time with each other. He'd sit back and watch them talk and think about Trinity, and wonder if they'd ever have that.  
  
Their waiter came back maybe half an hour later, setting their meals before them.  
  
Even though he knew with every inch of his knowledge that it was all fake, it still seemed to tantalizing and real and Neo nearly slobbered at the sight. It had been so long since had eaten anything worthwhile, besides gruel. Eggy mush. Big bowl of snot.  
  
"Will that be all, Mr. Anderson?" A familiar voice asked.  
  
Mouse and Neo immediately looked up. Astral glanced at Mouse and up at the waiter, confused.  
  
Then they were running. Running to keep one step ahead of the Agent, running for their respective lives, again. Neo pulled out his flip phone and demanded a way out, while Astral did the same for herself.  
  
But you see, there are no winding roads in Tripoli. A tightly-built grid system made it so they couldn't lose the agent down lilting roads, and had to cross some buildings to get to the payphones that Tank and Zelazny pointed out for them.  
  
They ended up in an alley, catching their breaths. Without a second thought, Mouse leapt to the nearby rooftop. He was about to keep running when he realized his companions weren't with him.  
  
He crept to the ledge of the roof and saw both Astral and Neo staring up at him.  
  
"Neo, please! Just grab her and jump!" He knew Astral had yet to make her first jump but Neo could do it now, he knew that. Everyone did.  
  
"I.I can't Mouse. I'm just not ready yet."  
  
"Oh, for," Mouse landed neatly on the ground and grabbed Astral by the waist, flying back up to the rooftop. "Yes you can. Come on!"  
  
Neo set his jaw determinedly, and willed the reality around him to falter and fall. Next thing he knew he was landing clumsily on the roof, just as an agent rounded the corner of their alley.  
  
And then they were running again. Mouse leapt easily over the rooftops, holding Astral to him like she was weightless, which she essentially was, while Neo did it a little more clumsily, a little fearfully. Each time it got easier, as he felt his reality become nothing more than his perception and his mind became the true master. So this is what it was like to move like Mouse, or Trinity. To know what was really real.  
  
They ended up in another street, a payphone ringing a little ways down. They ran again, but everyone around them shifted into Agents. Mouse ran with Astral to the payphone and she stole a quick kiss on his cheek before disappearing. Mouse turned, waiting for it to ring again, and saw Neo being beaten by a group of Agents. Remembering Morpheus' lecture the last time something like this had happened, Mouse ran back towards his fallen comrade. He somehow managed to push one of the Agents off his friends and helped Neo up.  
  
"Mouse, go right now!" Neo demanded as the Agents fell upon them again.  
  
"Not without you," The boy struggled in the grasp of the agents. "You're the One, you have to go first,"  
  
"Mouse, listen to me-"  
  
"No, Neo, go!" Mouse frantically pushed Neo out of the pile of limbs and fists and fell again, struggling to breathe under the pressure in his lungs and swellings in his face.  
  
Neo cast one last glance at his friend before disappearing.  
  
Now all that was left was himself. Mouse tried valiantly to fight off the Agents but to no avail. What the hell do they want with me anyway? He managed to think in the slow blurring light as he tried to escape from the Agents.  
  
"Leave him," One of the Agents spoke up. "He's not the anomaly,"  
  
"But he's Morpheus' boy," Another said. Mouse used this temporary distraction to his advantage and aimed a kick directly at the crotch of the Agent who was holding him down. Then it was just a matter of running as fast as was possible and reaching the payphone in time.  
  
--  
  
In the relative safety of the Real World, Mouse awoke to a bloody mouth, a black eye, and a very livid Morpheus.  
  
"What the hell were you trying to pull in there?"  
  
"What? Huh?" Mouse was still trying to adjust to his surroundings. He wiped at his chin and gagged at the taste of his blood.  
  
"You could have been killed! The next time Neo tells you to do something, you do it, do you understand?"  
  
"But I was just.what?"  
  
Morpheus stepped forward and wiped more blood from his young charge's face. "I never want you to go back into the Matrix without me, do you understand?"  
  
With that, he turned to stalk out of the construct.  
  
"Wait, Morpheus,"  
  
Half expecting a tantrum, Morpheus patiently turned back.  
  
"Look, I.I know I upset you, and I know you don't like me going into the Matrix to see Astral and stuff, but I was just doing what you asked. You told me never to leave Neo alone with Agents again and I didn't. And I don't think it's fair of you to be angry with me if you're not going to be clear about what you want."  
  
Morpheus didn't respond.  
  
"And why I listen to you anyway?" Came the characteristic anger. "It's not like you were ever honest with me."  
  
Morpheus cast a look back at his charge, before walking off alone into the darkness of the ship.  
  
Mouse wiped again at his mouth, wincing at the blood there. "Jesus fuck," He muttered.  
  
--  
  
Morpheus sat in the depression in his own bunk, staring blankly at an old book from the Before in his hands. Even his books didn't give him release now.  
  
His thoughts kept straying to Mouse, the closest thing he'd ever have to a son. Sure, Tank would go on about how Morpheus was his father figure, but he didn't see Tank grow up. He didn't raise Tank. While Mouse's secret trysts with Astral iffed Morpheus, he still thought Astral was a fine girl and was happy for them. He just wished Mouse would talk to him about it sometimes.  
  
But hell, he wouldn't want to talk to him either.  
  
Morpheus closed the book and leaned back, sighing. He knew it was inevitable.  
  
He was going to have to tell Mouse.  
  
--  
  
Tank came into the mess hall, a silly grin on his face.  
  
"What's this about, then?" Switch asked as she looked over some newly- picked tomatoes.  
  
"Morpheus is going to tell Mouse where he got him,"  
  
"What?" Neo looked up from where he and Trinity were sitting, confused.  
  
"In fact, he's going to take him in and show him." Tank grinned. "He just asked me to operate it."  
  
"You know I've never even thought about this." Dozer said. "Mouse just was always there."  
  
"Well this I have to see," Cypher threw in and the rest followed him down the dark corridor.  
  
When they got to the construct, Mouse was sitting apprehensively on one of the terminals, staring intently at his left hand, like he usually did when he was bored or nervous. When the crew pushed their way through the doors, Morpheus stepped forward from where he had been leaning serenely and glared at them all.  
  
Most of them avoided his gaze and fidgeting like schoolchildren, except Cypher, who was grinning like an idiot.  
  
"I would have you all know that Tank is the only one welcome here. If Mouse wants any of the rest of you to know what he learns today, he can tell you himself. And none of you will ask,"  
  
Neo shot a look at Mouse, who shrugged.  
  
"Alright, Morpheus. We're sorry. Mouse," Trinity cast a small supportive smile at the boy and took Neo's arm. "Let's go," They eventually clambered out of the construct until it was only the three left.  
  
Tank grinned at Mouse, who grinned back, and prepared for the operation. Morpheus touched Mouse's face tenderly.  
  
"Mouse." he started. Mouse stared back, patiently. Eventually Morpehus leaned forward and planted a soft, soothing kiss on Mouse's forehead. Then he withdrew and crossed to his own terminal.  
  
Mouse's brow furrowed in confusion. He loved Morpheus like a father and all, but he had never kissed him. Not that he remembered, anyway.  
  
He didn't have much time to dwell on that until he found himself in the white room.  
  
Morpheus stepped forward, dressed like he usually did in his elegant black suit and sunglasses. He smiled down at his charge, who was dressed similarly. It felt.different though.  
  
"I had Tank put a buffer in," Morpheus explained. "You're no longer a projection of your metal self, but you have taken on the form the Matrix assigned to you years ago." He produced a small hand mirror as if from nowhere and handed it to Mouse. Reflected back was a teenaged boy, one very alien to Mouse. He had very Asian features, and shaggy black hair much longer than Mouse's.  
  
"What the hell?" Mouse asked, more himself than anyone else.  
  
"The Matrix doesn't care about a person's physiology in the real world when assigning roles." Morpheus smirked. "I myself grew up in Japan, so imagine my surprise when I came out black. In fact, some men are cast as women and some women cast as men, and they fit in perfectly in those roles until they come out."  
  
Mouse cast a habitual glance at his right hand and started. "The fuck?"  
  
He cradled his right hand tenderly, staring at it. Two disfigured stubs where his ring and pinky finger should have been. And it hurt, Jesus, it hurt like hell.  
  
"You'll find out. I think you'll come to remember, too. Tank, upload to Mouse file TH645."  
  
Mouse closed his eyes for a few seconds, and then blinked in confusion. "What was that?"  
  
"Thai. You'll need it. Come."  
  
Suddenly they were standing in sunlight, as artificial as the sunlight was in Tripoli, in a lush jungle somewhere. Off in the distance were a few huts, made from straw and clay and leaves.  
  
"I have been searching for the One for many years before you were born, Mouse," Morpheus led him towards the huts. "I never thought I'd find him in a small, poor Thai village, but I found myself drawn here anyway. And it was here where I met a woman."  
  
They stopped at the door of one such hut. Children ran past them, playing, not even casting a second glance at the two strangers. "I stayed many weeks here. I think I might have loved her. She didn't believe what I told her, it wasn't in her nature to. But I must have loved her. I even fell in love with her five-year-old son."  
  
Mouse got a sinking feeling in his stomach.  
  
"Even though he was only five, her son worked in the garment factory in the city not far from here. It's the curse of capitalism and communism alike; somebody always has to do the labour. And the cheapest way is poor children. One day he had an accident, and was beaten for it. I told her I could take him to a better world where he would be treated right and she gave him to me."  
  
"So this was me, was it?" Mouse was about to be sick.  
  
"Yes." Morpheus knocked on the hut door. "They often call very small children 'Little Mouse' or 'Little Rabbit', things like that. I was never told your real name."  
  
The door opened and in the doorway stood a reasonably young, very down- trodden woman.  
  
Jesus Christ, she must've been a kid when she had me, Mouse felt pangs of sympathy. The work-worn woman looked up at Morpheus in wonderment.  
  
"Morpheus?" She spoke in a halting, clumsy speech. He smiled and greeted her in Thai, and hugged her gently to him.  
  
"Supatra," He said, gently pushing Mouse forward. "This is Little Mouse. Just like I promised." He leaned down to his charge. "This is Supatra. Your mother."  
  
Mouse stared at the care-worn face, the deep loving eyes that were brimming over with tears. Supatra smiled and reached out to touch his face, and she burst into tears. She cradled her son close to her gently, and he carefully put his arms around her.  
  
"Mother?" He whispered, and tears trickled down his face and the pain in his hand intensified as the memories rushed back.  
  
He was up before the break of dawn and drawing water from the well, his tiny legs scurrying as fast as they could to get the water to his sister. Sister was sick, and had been for a while, and Mother fretted over her night and day.  
  
Mother and Sister worked in the same place, down the street from the woolen house where Little Mouse himself went everyday. His Mother often said he was lucky, that he only worked mornings, and the human rights groups paid for him to learn to read and write. He hadn't been doing very well lately ever since Sister got sick. Now he came home in the truck with the other woolen house children, sometimes nursing a new wound given to him by the attendant for some bad work he had done. He would spend the rest of the day gathering fire wood and watching over Sister until Mother came home. She would often come home beaten as bad as she, but in different places. It hurt Little Mouse to see her this way, but he was glad he had her. Some of the other children at the woolen house were sent there by their parents full time, and were kept in chains and sometimes branded with irons.  
  
Little Mouse was very, very lucky.  
  
Lately a stranger had been coming home with Mother, helping her walk and tending to her wounds and Sister, and he would tell Little Mouse to practice his reading. He was huge and dark but Little Mouse learned not to be afraid of him.  
  
Sister was particularly sick the day he was taken away. He rode into town on the truck like he did every day, his mother holding him lovingly in her lap.  
  
"Mother, why is my sister so sick?" AIDS, he had heard one of the doctors say. The doctors only came every now and then, and like the others, this one was pale and spoke strangely, and didn't seem to like the jungle very much. She cried when she looked at his Sister, and then she looked at him and smiled sadly and turned away and shook her head.  
  
The older members of the village, the ones who didn't have to work in the city, shook their heads too and called it a curse, and said she brought it on herself with her evil ways.  
  
Little Mouse didn't understand how sister could be so evil, since she was only eight and not much older than himself.  
  
"The city men made her sick. The men that give us money for food."  
  
"Have you ever been sick, Mother?"  
  
His mother held him close and buried her face in his hair. "I have been sick before and I will probably be sick again, but I will never leave you, my Little Mouse."  
  
Little Mouse always liked these times best, before he got to the woolen house. He hated the woolen house with a passion. All day long he had to sit at a machine in a row with other children and push cloth through a machine. It was boring and stupid and he would start to ache after a while. He got hungry but they wouldn't let him eat. He had to relieve himself but they wouldn't let him do that either. And then he got tired and sloppy and they would beat him. After his second beating that morning he was tired and hungry and he didn't notice his fingers straying towards the needle. His right little finger got caught and it punctured but the machine kept going. He screamed and he screamed but no one could stop the machine. It ate away at his fingers until the overseer finally pulled him out of it, yanking at his flesh even more. He wailed and wailed and clutched at his hand but nobody would help him. Instead, they beat him again for getting blood all over the fabric.  
  
He woke up at home, his mother crying over him.  
  
"Mother?" He asked timidly.  
  
Mother gasped and gathered him into her arms and hugged him tightly. Watching over them was the big dark man that visited often.  
  
"Mother, they.my hand." His hand was now sloppily bound with white cloth seeping with crimson. "They just.they kept beating me,"  
  
"Shh, everything's alright now, my Little Mouse," She held him closer and rocked him softly.  
  
"I'm sorry for bleeding on the cloth, Mother," He pleaded.  
  
"It's alright, Little Mouse. I love you," She picked up her sobbing, writhing child. "You have to go with Morpheus,"  
  
"What? Mother, I want to stay with you,"  
  
"I know, my Little Mouse. But it is safer this way."  
  
"But who will look after Sister?"  
  
Mother smiled sadly at him, the way the doctors did. "Your sister died today, my Little Mouse. She's happy now. You will go with Morpheus, and you will be happy, too." She handed the shocked child to the big man, who held him tightly.  
  
"No! No, mother, I want to stay! Please! I'll be good, I promise!" He fought and struggled against the big dark man's hold as he was carried away.  
  
His Mother said nothing as she watched from the doorway of the tiny impoverished hut.  
  
"No! No! Mother, please!" He continued to scream.  
  
"It's alright, Mouse," The big man said in a voice that demanded respect. "Everything's going to be fine," At this Little Mouse managed to quiet down and sobbed into the huge man's chest.  
  
They got to a jeep and he was handed to another man, this one pale and skinny, in the back.  
  
"Jesus, Morph, is t'is who you was after talkin' 'bout?" The skinny man said. This alone made Little Mouse burst into tears, the strange language that he couldn't understand.  
  
"Yes," Morpheus started to drive off.  
  
"My Christ, Morph, he's just a bye!"  
  
"I had to get him out of there, Jolix."  
  
Jolix held Little Mouse closer as he screamed and cried. "And what're ye gonna say when he's after knowin' why he weren't given a choice?"  
  
Morpheus glanced at Jolix in the mirror. "We'll burn that bridge when we get to it,"  
  
"Oh, it's alright, little one," Jolix tried to soothe the child. "Here, have some chocolate, eh?" He broke off a bit of chocolate he got from his jacket pocket and the boy settled down.  
  
The next thing Little Mouse remembered was being sleepily hooked up to a machine in the city, and waking up to a terrifying ride into freezing water.  
  
--  
  
Morpheus waited outside while Mouse and Supatra visited for what was going on to two hours now.  
  
They mostly cried and hugged each other. Mouse explained to her that he was living with Morpheus and a band of pirates on a ship. It was the closest thing she could understand. She smiled and said it must be very exciting for him. He told her about Astral and Supatra nearly cried at the thought of having another daughter.  
  
When he went to leave, they hugged again.  
  
"I love you, my Little Mouse." Supatra whispered to him. "Never forget that."  
  
" I won't, mother." He kissed her on the cheek. "I love you."  
  
Morpheus was waiting for him when he came out. "Well?"  
  
"I think I'm going to be sick," Mouse shuffled towards his mentor.  
  
"The nearest payphone is in a rest area about ten minutes from here. Do you think you can make it?"  
  
"I.I think so. Can.can I hold your hand? It's just that I might."  
  
Morpheus smiled patiently. "Of course you may, little one."  
  
--  
  
When they got into the real world, Mouse sat in his foster father's arms and cried for hours. Tank left them alone and didn't tell anyone what he had seen.  
  
--  
  
Mouse spent a few days moping around on his own, mostly in his room, sleeping or crying or in the throes of a nightmare. Nightmares he could understand now, with faces that he recognized. Nobody asked him about it or even broached the subject amongst themselves, for Tank's face would get stormy and he'd usually leave.  
  
One day when Mouse was in his bunk, lying there, tear-stained and listless, Neo had come to his door. "Hey, Mouse, we've got a message for you from the Predator. From Astral,"  
  
A small smile flickered across Mouse's features as he followed Neo down the corridor. He would tell Astral the next time he saw her in person. She would understand. She was the one who made him care in the first place. Before she came into the real world, when they would sit drinking or smoking up on the wall in Karrebaeksminde, watching trains go by. He was well- dressed, like Morpheus, then. She made fun of him. Mass produced branded clothes, she was disgusted.  
  
He had asked what was wrong with them, and she snorted. No corporate empire should be built on the backs of children, she told him.  
  
He stood in front of the flatscreen and opened his mail. He read it quickly, and what he saw there burned into his memory forever.  
  
He closed the message and turned the screen off, and stared at it for a moment.  
  
Neo glanced up at him from where he stood, waiting for him to say something.  
  
"Jesus fuck," Mouse finally muttered, and fainted dead away. 


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six  
  
She acts like summer and talks like rain  
  
Reminds me that there's a time to change  
  
-Train "Drops of Jupiter"  
  
Mouse and Astral sat in the mess hall of the Nebuchadnezzer. They sat side by side, nervously, staring at the Neb's captain across from them.  
  
Astral's hair was growing back, long enough that she could wear it shorn into a shaggy, flippant fringe that fell into her eyes. Mouse thought it made her look dangerous and hot on so many levels. He winced and reminded himself that he really had to stop thinking about how Astral looked.  
  
"Well?" Morpheus prompted after a long enough wait. "Why did you ask me here? Why did you send everyone else away?"  
  
"Uh." Mouse started, without really getting anywhere.  
  
"I just want you to know that, even though what we're about to tell you will be a shock, it's not Mouse's fault," Astral started off. "And whatever happens to Mouse should happen to me too."  
  
"Astral," Mouse whispered.  
  
"It's really more my fault," Astral continued. "'Cause you know, in the Matrix there's this big concern about.you know.and you think I would know better."  
  
"That's the thing," Mouse added. "Neither of us was thinking."  
  
"Thinking of what, Mouse?" "Um.well, we.that is."  
  
"I'm pregnant," Astral said. "And I thought it was pretty obvious, the way we were hinting at it and all."  
  
There was a stunned silence. Astral leaned back, crossing her arms and flicking her hair back in the stance that Mouse had come to know as her 'eat me' pose.  
  
Mouse hazarded a look into Morpheus' silent, guarded face. Oh, this is bad, he thought, fingering his black toque nervously.  
  
There was a good five minutes where nothing happened. Eventually, Morpheus' surprisingly calm voice breached the silence.  
  
"I'm going to assume you're the father?"  
  
"Yes! Jesus Christ!" Mouse's patience had reached its limits. He pulled his toque down over frost-bitten ears and moaned. Morpheus' only response was to raise a warning eyebrow, ever-so-calmly.  
  
"Does Jolix know?" He asked Astral.  
  
"Not yet," Astral's voice was quiet. "But I think he knows something's wrong. I haven't exactly.been myself. Varley, our doctor, she knows. She knew before I knew."  
  
There was another stretch of silence.  
  
"Astral, if I may be alone with Mouse for a moment.?"  
  
Astral shot a quick, confused glanced at Mouse, before she left the room.  
  
Morpheus and Mouse remained in a taut silence, while Mouse nervously pulled the bottoms of his sweater sleeves over his hands, wrapping his skinny arms around his equally skinny frame.  
  
"I'm sorry," he said after a moment, his voice breaking childishly in the cold silence.  
  
Morpheus didn't respond, his face emanating not anger, nor disapproval, but a deep kind of sadness.  
  
"I'm beginning to remember things." Mouse went on, rubbing subconsciously at the phantom pains that were throbbing unbidden in his right hand.  
  
Morpheus leaned back, regarding his charge intently.  
  
"I.I can sort of remember how, when I first came here, you would wrap me up in blankets and carry me around. And.and you were always trying to get me to talk."  
  
Morpheus smiled slightly at this. "We gave you the language, but you just wouldn't speak. I was afraid I had already lost you."  
  
"But then I wouldn't shut up, hey?" Mouse grinned feebly, attempting to break the tension, somewhat. "Hey," he started. "I know I haven't been the best.student or whatever, and I'm sorry I got us into this, but I.I really want to be a good father. I just.I don't know what to do. I." He paused. "I need your help. I'm scared."  
  
Morpheus' façade broke and he crossed the table to sit by his charge. He put a huge arm around the frail child and, for the first time in months, Mouse didn't shrug it away.  
  
"I'm not angry, Mouse." The big captain began. "And I'm just as scared as you are. I was scared of you, too, for the first little while. But I'm here for you. I'll help you any way I can."  
  
"I.I don't ever want the baby to know it was a mistake. I don't ever want it to find out the truth."  
  
Morpheus glanced down at the boy by his side and remembered when he thought the same thing, when he would coax a trembling young Mouse back to sleep after a nightmare. "But one day the baby will find out." He said. Mouse didn't answer. "I'll still be here for you, Mouse. No matter what."  
  
All he could do was hold Mouse closer when the boy began to cry.  
  
--  
  
"I love this country where I am, this land is where I make my stand," Trinity sang beneath her breath, murmuring really, while she helped Switch with her hydroponics garden in the lab. "No other heart is truer than the one they call Canadian."  
  
"What is that?" Switch spoke up from where she was working.  
  
"Oh, Neo was sort of singing it earlier. I thought it was cute."  
  
"You never copy anything I do," Cypher spoke up petulantly from his spot in the lab.  
  
"That's 'cause you never do anything cute," Trinity flung back.  
  
"Ouch! Trinity, I am hurt, I really am." Cypher put his hands on his heart. "That you would say such a thing of me!"  
  
Apoc walked to where Switch was, discreetly putting an arm around her waist. "Shut up, Cypher, you're about as cute as a bulldog's ass."  
  
Cypher's only response was to glare in Apoc's general direction, his dark steely eyes narrowing in his odious face. "You know, Trin, if you ever get tired of waiting around for Neo, I'm here. I mean, it only makes sense- with the only other woman on the ship already taken," He was still glaring at Apoc.  
  
Trinity didn't answer, concentrating on her work and pointedly ignoring him. Cypher strode over to her, slowly, obnoxiously. He reached out to touch her. "Hell, even Mouse has a fuck buddy-"  
  
Trinity spun around with all the grace of a fighter of her experience, and punched him soundly in the left eye.  
  
"Mother fucker!" He yelled.  
  
"Leave me alone, Cypher," Trinity said calmly as he stumbled backwards, cradling his face.  
  
"Fine! Bitch." Other obscenities were heard as Cypher left the lab, grumbling to himself.  
  
"Forget him," Switch advised, dismissing Cypher the way she usually did.  
  
Trinity didn't answer, her face unreadable as she worked, her thoughts on someone not there.  
  
--  
  
Morpheus sat in the depression in his bunk, still too stunned to really think clearly. After their talk, Mouse had gone to figure things out with Astral. Morpheus had sat in the mess hall for longer than he cared to remember, thinking things he couldn't now remember. Eventually he made his way here.  
  
He looked down at what he held in his hands, a little startled. A small metal statuette of a human figure, running. Mouse had made it when he was younger; too young to do anything useful aboard the Nebuchadnezzer, when Dozer and Switch let him hang around in the shop and the lab. Dozer taught him to weld metal together, and given him all the small scraps he wanted.  
  
Morpheus wondered absently if Mouse would even remember making it, or know he still had it.  
  
Jesus Christ, a baby.  
  
Morpheus wasn't lying when he said he wasn't angry. But he was frustrated. And guilty, for some inadequately explained reason, like he felt it was his fault. That he had put off speaking to Mouse of such things, left it up for whoever else felt like taking the burden. Morpheus turned the figure in his hands and remembered how he thought he was doing the right thing, being a provider, a teacher, a disciplinarian when needed.  
  
Never a father.  
  
He wouldn't let the same thing happen to Mouse's child. He wouldn't let Mouse make the same mistakes he did. Astral would have to come aboard the Nebuchadnezzer- they would be together, and Morpheus wasn't ready to let Mouse leave the ship. Astral would understand- she didn't have the relationship with Jolix that Morpheus would have liked to think Mouse had with him.  
  
Absently he put off practical things like bunk space and work shifts- obviously, in a few months Astral would be in no condition to do much of anything, and Mouse would have to take care of her. Morpheus put the statuette back in it's place hidden in the shadows cast by his books of Before and settled down on his bunk, not ready for sleep, not up for anything else. He sighed and for not the first time, wondered if the fight against the Matrix, his search for the One, was really worth it.  
  
--  
  
Green code scrolled down a multitude of black monitors, mesmerizing, and Astral stared at it, lost in its obscene beauty.  
  
Mouse sat beside her, silent. They held hands in a simply childish gesture of support and affection and sat in the comfortable silence together. Sharing a blanket. Shivering every now and then.  
  
They had spent the last hour talking, the way they would on that train platform in the Denmark of the Matrix, about nothing and everything, cabbages and Kings, and mostly the future. Their promises to each other, that it would always be a team effort, that they would always put their child before themselves. Before that kind of talk became too serious and heavy for two family-less teenagers to handle and they lapsed into a silence.  
  
"If it's a boy." Astral said, suddenly breaking from her reverie. "I think we should name him Ashley."  
  
"Ashley?" Mouse asked outright. "For a boy?"  
  
"And your name is Mouse? And what about Neo?" Astral shot back with the flippant tone that Mouse had become so entranced with inside the Matrix. When Mouse begrudgingly backed down she went on. "And if it's a girl.I think we should call her Hope."  
  
Mouse fell silent, staring at the falling green code that held so much beauty and pain for so many people. "Hope." He said, simply. "I like it."  
  
Astral smiled at him in the relative darkness of the construct and he was reminded again of why he fell in love with her in the first place. 


	7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven  
There isn't a choice except to stop  
  
Thinking there isn't a choice  
  
-Built to Spill 'Forget Remember When'  
  
The summer sun shone down on Astral's falsely tanned face as she looked out at the waves of the Baltic Sea crashing against the shores of Jutland. Sunlight bounces off the cresting waves and, glittering, beckoned to her. Astral wondered if time passed in the Matrix the way it did in the real world. Had it been this warm when she left? She had come out before winter, that much she knew. It had been a long while since she had gone to see Inger that first time. Four months.  
  
She had been out of the Matrix for more than half a year.  
  
When did she stop missing it?  
  
Astral's hands absently went to her belly, drawn taut by the magic of the Matrix. In the real world, her belly had started to swell with the life that grew inside her.  
  
Mouse sat beside Astral on the public bench, fiddling awkwardly with the cellular phone he held in hand. "We should be quick," he said in Danish, the file having been incorrectly labelled Norwegian.  
  
"I know," Astral answered, her arms crossing instinctively over her belly at the thought of Agents.  
  
"She'll be here," Inger said on Astral's other side. "She promised. It's a long ride from Karrebaeksminde."  
  
"Why'd you choose this spot?" Astral stared at the statue of the Little Mermaid and the flocks of American tourists around it. "I hate it here."  
  
"I know," Inger replied, smiling. "You haven't changed at all, Astrid."  
  
"How come you told Greta where we were going to be? I thougth you hated her." Mouse's knowledge of Inger's life had all been what Astral told him- which wasn't much except that she loved Inger almost as much as she loved Mouse.  
  
"She's not that bad.Astrid's disappearing really smartened her up. I used to hate her. But somebody had to take care of me after Astrid left."  
  
There was a silence after that, when Astral closed her eyes and both boys instinctively moved towards her.  
  
"Inger?" A familiar voice called out. Walking across the parking lot was Greta, no longer an image of the plastic cellophane-wrapped Gap world in which she once lived. Untied sneakers and knee-high striped socks, and with blue floods and a thrift tank top with a Polish slogan. Astral's heart broke when she noticed Greta's face no longer occupied with the self- possessed petulant pout, but instead her ashen face was cast gravely at the ground, her once shining blue eyes now distant and dark, with the old wise look that used to trouble Astral's mother. Greta had her thumbs hooked under a backpack, to which was strapped-  
  
"Is that my skateboard?" Astral asked no one particular.  
  
"Greta didn't want it to go to waste. She met some skaters at school, and learned pretty quickly."  
  
"Astrid?" Greta was looking up, staring at her sister, shocked.  
  
"..Greta." Astral realized what Jolix had been talking about when he spoke about how hard it would be to see family again, and to let go all over again after that.  
  
Greta stared at her for another moment, then burst into tears.  
  
--  
  
Back in the real world, Cypher stood watching the screens in the Construct while Tank stood guard over the two youngest crewmembers.  
  
"I think it's disgusting," Cypher finally said after a moment.  
  
"What?" Tank didn't look up from the screens or his typing, tossing the word over his shoulder.  
  
"They're teenagers, for chrissakes. Where I'm from in the Matrix, if I knocked some girl up, her father would've shot my head clear off my shoulders. Or made me marry her."  
  
"Well, this isn't the Matrix." Tank smiled. "And Zion is infinitely more enlightened. I think it's cute. Look at them holding hands like that."  
  
Mouse and Astral, in their terminals, lay with one arm each strapped in and the others clasped in his lap.  
  
"I hope I can find someone like that one day," Tank smiled softly, staring intently at a row of green symbols falling down the black screen.  
  
"Pfft," Cypher's lip curled, pulling his goatee into a sick array. "Doesn't exist."  
  
"Then what's that?"  
  
"That is two hormonal teenagers who like to fuck," Cypher said bluntly.  
  
"God, Cypher!" Tank still didn't look up from his screen. "You're going to hell, you know that?"  
  
"I'm already there, man," Cypher muttered, but Tank didn't seem to hear them.  
  
"You just can't stand to see people happier than you, can you?" Tank asked.  
  
Cypher stopped. Perhaps that was the truth. Perhaps he wandered the halls of the Nebuchadnezzer in the day and see everyone else in some semblance of a family unit or a circle of friends, with himself as the weasel-like jerk. Then he'd stay awake and night and watch the people in the Matrix, blissful in their ignorance, happy. Not like him.  
  
Of course, he didn't watch the sweatshops of Thailand or Malaysia or India or Bangladesh, or the displacement camps in the former Soviet, or the slums of South America, or the broken homes of the first world. He watched the blondes, the brunettes, the redheads, anything that gave him an excuse to feel sorry for himself.  
  
"We have to support them," Tank was still talking, breaking Cypher out of his reverie. "It's tough. I mean, I want to have a family some day, but.wow. Like, they're seventeen. I don't even think Astral is that old. Morpheus can't do the father thing all by himself, you know."  
  
"I think they should abort it," Only now did the clicking of Tank's keyboard stop. Cypher went on. "Morpheus can't dote on Mouse forever, you know. We can't afford to feed another mouth."  
  
Tank still didn't answer, and stared stoically at the screen in front of him, ignoring the other man.  
  
Eventually Cypher sighed and turned around, and who should he find himself face to face with but the Nebuchadnezzer's big captain.  
  
"Uh.oh hey, Morph, how's it going?"  
  
Morpheus didn't answer, the way he did when he was to come off as intimidating.  
  
"Um, what I said just now.I didn't really mean it, you know? I mean, I wouldn't expect anyone to take me seriously, okay?"  
  
Abortion went beyond a religious or personal thing in the real world of the Now. The human population being dangerously low as it was, every human life was sacred and if someone were unable to take care of a child, the orphan was lovingly raised by someone else who was more than willing. The way Morpheus was more than willing to lovingly raise Mouse, however well he did that. Besides that, the lack of medical knowledge and materials led to high rates of maternal death and handicapped or deformed children, in the few instances that it was actually attempted.  
  
"Um.I'm just gonna take off, 'kay?" Cypher didn't wait for a response before he brushed past his captain and slipped into the darkness.  
  
Morpheus didn't turn around to watch him go.  
  
--  
  
The sound of skateboard wheels scraping against the wood of half-pipes and ramps brought back a familiar unease to Astral. She sat with her head on Mouse's shoulder, Mouse who never knew homesickness, to whom the only familiar unease would be the sound of a little girl screaming in the aftermath of rape, the smell of sweat and blood in the workhouse.  
  
Inger, Greta, Astral and Mouse sat on the lip of one such ramp, huddled together, sad and silent.  
  
Mouse and Astral still didn't tell neither Inger nor Greta the truth. That made it even worse.  
  
"Um.well," Astral said eventually after the silent stretched too long, almost a full half an hour after the four had finished their tears and hugs and apologies. "I.We have something to tell you guys."  
  
Inger looked up curiously, the tiniest bit of bruise under one left eye. He still wouldn't leave Sören, he said, not even for Astral's sake. Just as she wouldn't leave Mouse for his- that was his reasoning.  
  
Greta remained staring at the sun, setting over Copenhagen's skyline, her eyes still sad and distant.  
  
There wasn't a lot of hesitance this time. Astral looked at Mouse, who nodded, and said it. "We're pregnant."  
  
Silence.  
  
"What? We?!" Greta broke out of her depressed silence. "You? And-and him?" Greta stepped forward and slid into the bowl ramp, propping herself over the lip on her elbows with agility that surprised Astral. She wondered fleetingly if Greta ever started raving. She'd be a good dancer. "But.but how?"  
  
"Well, Greta," Inger started with a confidence Astral hadn't yet seen in him. "When a Mommy and Daddy love each other very much-"  
  
"Shut the hell up, Inger," Greta furrowed her brows and, to Mouse, looked startlingly like her sister. "When? .You, Astrid?"  
  
"Yes, I know, it surprised me too." Astral sighed. "I've known for maybe a month. Mouse."  
  
Mouse shrugged. "Two weeks. We just told-" He broke off and he and Astral shared a frightened look. ".my uncle. I- I live with my uncle."  
  
"Yes. In Germany," Astral added, hastily. "A suburb of Hamburg, they let me move in with them."  
  
"Well, this is.this is just mind-blowing." Inger slid into the bowl ramp with Greta and the two looked up at Astral and Mouse.  
  
"Um," Mouse started. "Astral- Astrid wanted to ask the both of you to be the godparents, but." He looked at the soon-to-be mother of his child (and that just sounded odd) who sighed. He slid his hand under hers reassuringly.  
  
"We.we don't know if we're ever going to come back to Denmark." Astral said in a small voice.  
  
Greta and Inger looked at each other. "Well that's all right," Inger started. "I mean, I understand. We can go visit you. Sören drives the Autobahn across sometimes to make deliveries in Austria-"  
  
"No, uh." Astral tried to grasp at straws. "Some people there are still.you know, upset about that whole." Oh god, think. "Schleswig thing." She stopped, awkwardly.  
  
Three sets of eyes stared at her. "What?" Greta said.  
  
"Look, forget it, can.can we just hang out for today? And enjoy it?" Astral looked down into her little sister's eyes, pleading.  
  
"Yeah." Greta said, in a casual tone that Mouse recognized as one Astral used to speak with. "We can do that."  
  
--  
  
"How long have they been in there?" Morpheus asked Tank, easing himself into a terminal across from the two children.  
  
Tank had lost track of time. He had been too busy staring at the screen, watching the boy that Astral used to know. He was captivated. The only other time he had felt this way was when he knew a certain Canadian with the funniest accent he had ever heard when he first came with Dozer to work on the Neb. And then Jolix had left to captain his own ship. And Tank was alone.  
  
"Oh." He glanced up, finally. "Oh, Jesus, hours. Way longer than is safe. I tried calling them in maybe an hour ago, but Mouse turned the cell off." Tank looked up at his captain. "It's a really personal time for them and all, you know."  
  
"I know," Morpheus sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, remembering how Tank and Jolix would stand watch while he spent hours in the Thailand of the Matrix with Supatra.  
  
You have to let them grow up at some point, he figured.  
  
But damned if he was going to let anything happen to Mouse at this point.  
  
The boy had spoken to him, actually to him, for the first time in a long while, that morning in the kitchen.  
  
"I've been thinking about it," Mouse said as he helped Morpheus clean up. "And I want.I don't know, I think it would be nice if I had a proper family. And I really do love Astral, I think." He stopped short, suddenly unsure of himself, and, head bowed, had said in a child like voice: "I think I want to marry her."  
  
Morpheus settled himself back in the terminal and positioned his neck over the crucial spot. "Let me in," He commanded, in his deep fatherly voice that demanded respect.  
  
--  
  
Greta hadn't laughed so hard in her life, for as long as she could remember, anyway. It was around the time her sister had disappeared, when she spent her time putting up posters and calling police stations, and helping her mother with all the things she had never thought needed to be done before, that her trendy, convenient, fair-weather friends stopped supporting her, stopped looking for her sister, stopped letting her cry on their shoulders. Around that time when she started saving money so she could make a clean break and get out of Karrebaeksminde, when she went to look in on Inger in memory of Astrid, and took up skateboarding, and found something she truly loved, as opposed to something the magazines told her to do.  
  
It was around that time she stopped laughing at things. Around that time she started doubting everything she saw, began suspecting that there was something else, something bigger. Then one day, after she and her mother began to realize that Astrid was not coming back, she ventured into her room for the first time- and saw something on the computer she was sure she wasn't supposed to see.  
  
She started talking to people, her skater friends, the rave kids, she eventually met Europe's most notorious hacker, a woman calling herself Mycroft, and started to see things she never saw before.  
  
But she didn't say anything. She didn't want to put Astrid in anymore danger, and she definitely did not want to say anything in front of Inger.  
  
So now the four sat, in the large apartment Inger shared with Sören, drinking sparkling white wine (except for Astral, at Inger's insistence) and eating lobster the way Astral learned at a party across the straight in Helsingor.  
  
"No, you have to suck it out," Astral instructed Mouse.  
  
"What the hell? It's impossible!" Mouse bickered back and forth with her and Inger saw that they were truly in love. Maybe in a way that he and Sören weren't, but that was a matter for another day.  
  
"Here," Astral sighed impatiently, and ripped off an arm for Mouse, holding it to his mouth. "Now," she commanded.  
  
Mouse sucked the meat out and choked, spluttered, and made a face. "God, fuck that's fucking salty!" He protested, wiping the salt water from his mouth and downing another glass of wine.  
  
They were interrupted by a knock at the door.  
  
The four straightened up, and Mouse instinctively blocked Astral, just in case.  
  
"Um, come in," Inger called, wondering who it could be. The door opened, and there stood the biggest, blackest man he had ever seen, dressed impeccably in an Armani suit.  
  
"Oh my god!" Greta said, boldly, amusement on her face. "Are you the rent collector?" There was an air of sarcasm in her voice that Mouse knew could only have been taught by Astral.  
  
Morpheus cocked an eyebrow.  
  
"Uh, no, that's." Mouse and Astral glanced at each other.  
  
"That's.our driver," Astral supplied. "Uh.Mouse's uncle's really rich, see, we drove here. Now.we have to go," She stood, abruptly, sighing.  
  
"Wait," Greta called after her, joining her by the door. "Am.am I ever going to see you again? Are you sure I can't come down to Germany?"  
  
"I'm sure," Astral said. "Please, Greta, don't make me explain.just trust me?"  
  
"You know I will." Greta said sadly.  
  
"And.remember.I.I'm proud of you and I'll always be watching out for you. I love you, you know?"  
  
".I know."  
  
The sisters remained silent, looking sadly at each other, for a moment. Astral pulled Greta in for a hug, blinking back tears. "I'm sorry," She said. She thrust a paper, conjured up in the white room, into Greta's hands. "Will you give this to Mom? Tell her I'm sorry, too."  
  
"I will."  
  
Astral kissed her sister quickly on the cheek, then one for Inger, and she, Mouse and Morpheus left.  
  
And Greta never saw her sister again.  
  
--  
  
Cypher lay in his cabin, staring up at the impersonal, dark, cold metal wall.  
  
He hated it here. He was hating it more every day.  
  
Then and there, Cypher made up his mind.  
  
He would go back.  
  
No matter what. 


	8. Chapter Eight

Chapter 8  
We all want a better life  
  
I think I found you just in time  
  
And I'm feeling so divine  
  
we all want a better life  
  
And I'm not going home  
  
- "Balmes" Ian Pooley and Esthero.  
  
Morpheus stood in the cold, impersonal corridors of the Nebuchadnezzer. The hall was silent save for the low, constant hum and thrum of the ship's engines and the EM pulse cannons charging.  
  
A little ways down, closer to the warmth of the engine room, was the tiny gray enclave where the crew had set Astral up. The cabin was the safest in the event of a Squid attack; down in the dark black belly of the ship things were far more secure than anywhere else.  
  
Mouse was in there with her, had been for a while. Morpheus shifted his weight and thought again about why he was waiting there; considered going up into the construct with Neo, but something kept him rooted. He knew the time was coming, that Mouse would no longer need his guidance, and that he would have to let go of the child's metaphorical hand and let him walk alone. Morpheus was finding it uncharacteristically hard to let go.  
  
When did Mouse stop being the silent child wrapped in gray blankets? When did he stop being the eager, curious student and start becoming the brilliant visual programmer he was? When had Mouse come to stand on this threshold of manhood, and where had Morpheus been all that time?  
  
The door opened and Mouse stepped out, leaning against the door after it closed behind him.  
  
The boy looked up at his impressive guardian. "You're still here. Astral's, uh.napping. I stayed with her until she fell asleep." Mouse allowed for a small, shy smile.  
  
"And?" Morpheus prompted.  
  
Mouse bit his lip. With a cocky smirk and a voice dripping with teenaged confidence (that didn't quite hide the childish insecurity hidden within), he spoke: "She said yes. 'F course."  
  
--  
  
One month later.  
  
Somewhere in the nasal-drip inducing environment of the Nebuchadnezzer, amid nauseating fluorescent lights and metal grating floors, Switch had her gardens. Her pride and joy. It was here where the crew had elected to have Mouse and Astral's makeshift wedding. Switch smiled as she gently touched the timid white flowers she had set up at the front of the room. These were the first ones Mouse had planted, under her watch, at about nine years old. That they had survived this long was a feat of indescribable proportions, and Switch sighed as she wondered when, exactly, Mouse had grown up.  
  
Neo leaned against the wall on the opposite site of the gardens, watching Switch work with Trinity in bringing a little beauty to the stagnant gray room.  
  
He was getting a little sick of watching Trinity from a distance and being the neutral friend when she was near, sick of near hits and far misses whenever he attempted to get her attention. Neo didn't flirt much when he was in the Matrix. He didn't relate too well with people and didn't talk much at all. Well, he didn't talk much to anyone here either, but he felt he related with Trinity at least a little.  
  
If Neo had a more complex thought process - that is to say, if he stressed himself out and was so self-absorbed so as to needlessly overanalyze his feelings and options before doing anything - he would have dismissed his feelings for Trinity long ago. He was in a new environment, and though he had been there almost a year, and could wrap his head around the logistics of the Matrix and his existence in the Now, it was the lifestyle he was still adjusting too. He was naturally inclined towards women, and of the two on the ship, Trinity had showed him kindness and patience while Switch, though she was very nice, was more distant and insensitive towards him. Besides, to the best of his knowledge, Switch was taken, while Trinity was refreshingly and adamantly independent.which he admired.  
  
But Neo didn't see his life through the eyes of a playwright or a psychiatrist. He didn't pretend to be something he wasn't by talking himself out of his emotions. He knew what he felt and he liked Trinity. But battling emotions of homesickness and anger at the whole human situation, in addition to his natural antisocial shyness, made him coy and withdrawn, leaving Trinity to do the pursuing. And Neo wasn't even sure if she was pursuing him or if she was just as confused as he was, or if it was a joke she was playing on him as it turns out she's not a very nice person at all. His insecurities borne from a childhood in solitude caused him to suffer in silence and wait to see what would happen if it were the last option. He refused to let himself get upset over some girl who wasn't even interested. And if she wasn't interested.well, living on a ship like the Nebuchadnezzer for as long as she had would make anyone crazy.  
  
Trinity smiled at him from across the room and he smiled back, shyly. She wiped the inferior soil on her pants, catching some under her worn nails, and approached him.  
  
"Hey. What have you been up to?"  
  
"Oh.uh, nothing. Just hanging around. Waiting for.y'know." Neo gestured at the meager set up before them. "Trinity? Do you ever.y'know.miss living in the Matrix?"  
  
"Pfft. No." Trinity had not as yet told Neo, or anyone else except Morpheus for that matter, of her past in the Matrix, and few were left aboard who remembered the hell of a time she had adjusting to the Neb.  
  
"Oh. Well.I dunno, one of my cousins got married when I was a kid, I was the ring bearer, and, y'know.this just reminded me and sort of bummed me out." He avoided her eyes and stared out at Switch arranging her hydroponically grown plants.  
  
"Well.you know, Neo, if you ever need to talk about anything-"  
  
"I'm fine. S'ok. Really." Neo hastily backed off, suddenly frightened by her interest, suddenly too close to human contact for comfort. He walked off, quickly.  
  
Trinity watched his back retreating down the impersonal corridors and sighed.  
  
"Ain't that a stab in the back?" Came a sadly familiar voice from behind her. "You offer a nice and obvious invitation and you get slapped away. Hurts, don't it?"  
  
"Shut up, Cypher."  
  
"Hey, calm down, honey." Cypher swung around so he was in front of her in the doorway. "You know you only want him 'cause Morpheus thinks he's the One. Morpheus could be wrong, you know. He's been wrong before."  
  
"That's not true."  
  
"What? That you only want the One or that Morpheus might be wrong?"  
  
"Both of them." Trinity held that impassive mask of emotions on her face that she had picked up from Morpheus so long ago she couldn't even remember doing it. "Frigg off, Cypher, you've never loved anything in your life."  
  
Trinity brushed past Cypher, who for his part was just a little shocked by what she had said. She was probably right about his not loving anything, but he was just teasing. He didn't imagine that what she had for Neo was actually serious. If anything, the knowledge that some punk like Neo could make a babe like Trinity have it so bad made his stagnating anger worse.  
  
Cypher turned and looked at where Trinity had been, wrapping his arms around his solid frame a little tighter. When had the ship gotten so cold? He allowed himself a small, bitter smirk at the thought of the coming day when he'd be warm again, and walked off to the mess.  
  
--  
  
Mouse sat across Astral in the relative darkness of.her.cabin, holding her hands gently.  
  
The ceremony was over, had been for a while, but the two could sit together on the small dingy cot forever if it were possible. At least, that's how Mouse felt. The wedding was originally supposed to be a small affair, with just the Neb's crew and Jolix there to give Astral away. Of course, Jolix had gotten carried away and organized a bigger affair with the rest of the Predator's crew (which was considerably larger than Morpheus') and a few close friends from other ships who were lucky enough to be docked with the Predator at the time. Now, in the mess and garden, the ceileih that Jolix was determined to throw for a week raged on while the couple sat silently, 'enjoying each other's company' on the solitude of the cabin down by the engine room.  
  
"I love you," Mouse said, eventually, softly, tracing the iron ring he had welded himself on her hand.  
  
"I love you too," She said back, soft enough that only he could hear. They both knew they were probably too young to know what love really was, but they took comfort in the fact that whatever they felt for each other, it was reciprocated.  
  
Astral was heavy with child now, and though she didn't let it on, it was wearing her out more than she anticipated. No young girl ever imagines pregnancy or motherhood to be what it truly is, a grueling test of strength and endurance- especially in an environment where it was hard to eat your fill, and clean water was scarce.  
  
But, Astral thought in her self-shaming way that had prevented her from becoming another make-up wearing magazine reading teenaged bitch she hated so much somewhere in the Matrix some poor girl is doing it with nothing.  
  
Mouse was worried about her. It had been a chilling moment when he realized he was worried about her, he was already scared to death about taking care of a baby, he was already scared of Agents and Squids and getting sick and waking up back in the workhouse and not having enough food one day. Though only Morpheus couldn't even guess at those fears. It was the moment when he realized that growing up was more of a bitch than people let on, that these were the first real steps of becoming a real man, and being a real man isn't all it's cracked up to be. Mouse ran his knuckled down Astral's soft cheeks, amazed at the frailty of her bones. How could she possibly be carrying another human life inside of her? She was way too skinny to be believably pregnant.the baby looked like it was going to be way too small. Just like Mouse. And Mouse was the one who did this to her.  
  
Mouse didn't voice any of his worries though, seeing Astral's unspoken weariness and pain already, seeing the way she got so tired so fast, seeing the discomfort in her every move. He saw how much she missed her family, how much she had wanted them to be there for what was supposed to be a special day. But he didn't say anything of his own fears. He was supposed to be strong for her- that's what men did.  
  
So he just leaned in and kissed her cheek softly and told her that he loved her.  
  
--  
  
Even though there was a ceileih in the mess and garden, and it sounded like a lot of fun, and there were probably lots of cute young men there, Tank sat at the operating terminal and watched the scrolling green code of the Matrix, as alive to him as flesh and blood. He was brooding when a certain Canadian with the funniest accent he had ever heard came up behind him.  
  
"Tank, y'perv, what the hell y'doin'?"  
  
"Oh, God, Jolix." Tank, startled, drifted off as the Predator's young captain settled himself into a seat next to him, with a bottle of moonshine and a puckish grin upon his face.  
  
"So, what've ye been up to? Watching Astral's bye?" Jolix flicked his head at the screens, where the terminal was listening in on Inger.who was sleeping.  
  
"I.It's just.he's so nice when he's asleep." Tank looked up shyly at Jolix. "I.hope you don't think I'm sick or something. I.I change it when.y'know."  
  
Jolix took a swig of his moonshine and just looked at Tank.  
  
"Oh God," Tank broke. "Did you know that when you were still on the Neb I had the biggest crush on you?"  
  
"I know."  
  
It was hard for Tank to be saying this. He hastily turned back to the screens. "I don't know how Cypher can do this for entertainment." He reached out and touched the coding, gingerly, his fingertips leaving the slightest imprints on the display before they evened out. "I mean.Inger's such a sweet kid and such bad things happen to him. And.it doesn't even have a point 'cause it's not real. And I can't do anything."  
  
"Even if ye could.if the bye were on t'ship.would ye do anythin' t'en? I means.he's still a kid."  
  
Tank sat silent for a moment, staring at the screen. "I guess you're right."  
  
"I'se always right, bye."  
  
"So, what, did you come here to make fun of me or something?"  
  
"Oh.no, no, my Christ, don't ever think that, Tank." Jolix leaned forward, uncomfortably close. "What ye're feelin' for Astral's bye, that's not.yuir not in love, for frig's sake. He's.he's just someone cute 'n little that ye're fond of. Like." Jolix shifted, a little uncomfortable. "Like ye were just Dozer's li'l brother, bye, just a tag along. Cute kid, though. But now.now, ye're all grown up."  
  
Tank lifted an eyebrow. "So what're you say-" He was cut off by shock when Jolix placed a rough, quick kiss on his lips.  
  
"I'se saying I care about ye, ye dumb fuck, even if ye don' think so." Jolix stood, matter-of-factly. "Now are ye goin' ta join us or what?"  
  
"In a minute." Tank muttered, breathlessly, as Jolix walked off. Then, slowly, he turned and cast another sad glance at the Matrix, as the sweet boy who slept, oblivious, to the secrets surrounding him. 


	9. Chapter Nine

Chapter 9  
I'm writing a song all about you  
  
A true song as real as my tears  
  
But you've no need to fear it  
  
'Cause no one will hear it  
  
Sad songs and waltzes aren't selling this year  
  
-Cake "Sad Songs and Waltzes"  
  
Astral went into labour early. Early in that her body wasn't ready to bring another life into the world. Of course, her body was not yet ready to carry another life to begin with. The baby would be underweight. Everyone knew this. Most babies born in the real world in the Now were underweight. But that was normal for them. Astral had been well fed in the pods as a slave, and in the last year that she had been free her body had undergone such stress and starvation that it was really in no shape for anything.  
  
It happened so quickly. She and Mouse were in hydroponics with Switch when her water broke and contractions started. They were more intense than what she had been preparing herself for, or maybe it was that she was just too weak.  
  
They didn't have time to call the Predator, no time to get Varley to come aboard. Astral asked for her, cried for her, but there was nothing they could do.  
  
"Astral, Astral," Apoc cooed to her once they had her in the infirmary, sitting up on one of the slabs, crying and trying to suppress her moans. "You have to calm down for me. You have to breathe. Can you do that?" Astral nodded, her face covered in sweat. She took deep calming breaths and stopped shaking. "Does your back hurt?" She nodded. "Mouse, help her."  
  
Mouse started rubbing Astral's shoulders and back, his hands shaking as much as she was. Switch and Trinity helped, Trinity holding the girl's hand comfortingly, Switch fetching and carrying for Apoc.  
  
The rest of the men hung back in the doorway, all of them a little shocked.  
  
"Ow," Astral said after a moment of stunned silence.  
  
"Does it burn? Okay, lie down,"  
  
There was a minor scuffle as the group arranged Astral comfortably. She closed her eyes and held her breath.  
  
"No, honey, no, don't push," Apoc tried to hide the panic in his voice. Shit. This wasn't in his job description. "It's not in position yet. Just keep breathing."  
  
"But-"  
  
"I know, I know. Just trust me."  
  
"Mouse?"  
  
"I'm here, Astral, I'm here, it's okay, I love you." He held her hand and wiped the sweat from her face and kissed her. He was scared, and seeing her scared only frightened him more.  
  
The was a boom, and a crash, and the Nebuchadnezzer was jostled and Astral nearly fell off the bed.  
  
"Shit! Squiddies! How long have we been here?" Tank yelled and dashed down the corridor.  
  
Trinity winced. "Dammit. Astral, I have to help, I can't-"  
  
"It's fine, Trin, it's okay. Go," Astral was close to fainting.  
  
"What should I do?" Mouse's voice was impossibly small and boyish.  
  
"You stay here," Apoc said firmly, Squids be damned. "She needs you."  
  
"Dozer can stay and help," Morpheus' deep rumbling voice cut through the chaos. "I'll need the others,"  
  
Trinity hugged Mouse to her quickly before disappearing with the rest. All that was left was Mouse, Dozer, Apoc and Astral.  
  
Astral yelled almost inhumanly as a new wave of pain shot through her, arching up on the bed, scaring the hell out of Mouse.  
  
"We need to get the baby in the right position. She needs to squat. Dozer, help her up."  
  
Tank's giant of an older brother picked up the frail girl in his arms and helped her to squat on the cold metal floor of the Nebuchadnezzer's infirmary.  
  
"What should I do?" Mouse asked nervously, unwilling to let go of Astral's hand.  
  
"Go turn on that incubator," Apoc gestured to the same warm space that had welcomed all of them into the real world. "Heat up some blankets in there, too."  
  
Apoc kept Mouse busy and, thankfully, away from the brink of panic as he had him tend to the incubator, boil water, fetch Astral ice and wipe the sweat off her brow. Dozer was also a pillar of strength, calmly keeping Astral from losing balance, unfazed by the wetness running down her naked thighs, and her fingers digging into his arms like nails.  
  
When the baby's head was peeking out, and Astral was lying on her back with three men in between her and her child, Mouse held her hand and laid his head by hers and tried to talk her through it. "We're going to have a baby, Astral," There was so much blood. Too much. "A real baby. Ours. I'm so proud of you, Astral," And Astral only closed her eyes and panted and grunted and sweated. Mouse stroked her brow and kissed her temple. "I love you," he said with the full conviction of the truth in his heart.  
  
After the shoulders were delivered, the rest was comparatively easy. Apoc cut the cord and Dozer swaddled the baby in the same rough gray blankets that Mouse still sometimes wore around his shoulders.  
  
"Mouse?" Astral whispered as she lay there panting in a pool of sweat, an ocean of blood between her legs.  
  
"I'm here. I love you." Mouse realized he was crying.  
  
"I love you too." Astral weakly pressed Mouse's knuckles against her lips and kissed them. "Go see our baby."  
  
Mouse wandered over to where Dozer was clearing the baby's nose and cleaning her up. "Is she.is she okay?"  
  
"She'll be fine," Dozer said, wrapping the blankets loosely and warmly around the wailing infant. "You should be happy." He spared Mouse a quick, jovial smile. "You're a daddy now."  
  
".Yeah."  
  
And sometime in those moments when Mouse looked down at his child with trepidation, Astral died on the table before she even passed the afterbirth.  
  
--  
  
Steak. Oh, god, it had been so long since he had eaten steak. A real, good, juicy barbecued steak. Cypher almost had a screaming orgasm as the juicy dead meat made it's way through his mouth.  
  
And to think he had given this up. This, the smallest of pleasures he could have made for himself in the Matrix. For nothing. For cold, metallic, damp, sickly anger and tension. For a fight everybody knew they couldn't win, under a captain who had possibly lost his sanity years ago, chasing a myth.  
  
Astral's death had been the breaking straw. And Morpheus could only stand there with his all-knowing, everything-has-a-purpose look that made Cypher want to punch him. If she had stayed in the Matrix they could have saved her, she could have lived her life the way it was supposed to be. She would have grown up into a beautiful woman, too, if she knew how to dress. But instead she died. In the cold mean environment of the Nebucadnezzer, where Cypher's soul had died long ago.  
  
See, Cypher had a heart after all. He smiled smugly to himself as he took a long deep drink of the sweet red wine before him.  
  
"All right. You get my body back in a power plant, reinsert me into the Matrix and I'll get you what you want."  
  
Agent Smith almost had that sickly intelligent look as Morpheus. Almost. It was a little less nauseating. "Access codes to Zion."  
  
"I told you, I don't know them. But I can give you the man who does."  
  
Morpheus. Ha. The bastard deserved it.  
  
--  
  
"You can't blame yourself." Switch said for what seemed like the millionth time. Apoc didn't respond. Not really. His glassy eyes sort of widened but he continued to stared at a point slightly above nowhere, picking listlessly at the blades of hydroponics grass he clutched lovingly in his hand. "You.you did all you can."  
  
"It wasn't enough." His voice cracked like a child's.  
  
"But.but you couldn't." Switch was getting frustrated. She hated seeing Apoc like this, she hated seeing anyone like this. "There was no time. It's not your fault. If we had gotten Varley-"  
  
"Varley could have saved her. But I couldn't."  
  
"No, no, Apoc." Switch sighed. "Even if Varley had been here, and she survived.it was only a matter of time. You know that. We all knew that. She was little, she was.she was sick. Like Mouse. Except she.she couldn't possibly survive having a baby, could she? Really? Her heart was there but she.Apoc, please."  
  
Apoc didn't respond. Tears threatened to fall from Switch's icy eyes as she threaded her fingers through Apoc's and laid her head on his shoulder. "Please, Apoc, please." She placed her other hand on his arm, searching for anything, any sort of response. "Please."  
  
There was no response.  
  
--  
  
"What is the One supposed to do, Trinity?" Neo sat up in the construct, staring listlessly at the scrolling green code.  
  
".what do you mean?" Trinity leaned against the wall behind him.  
  
"What.what exactly am I supposed to do? Why.what's so special?"  
  
There was a brief pause as Trinity regarded the side of Neo's face, trying to form a reasonable answer. "He.they say.they say the One can control the Matrix from the inside, and change it as he sees fit. Make it better."  
  
"I'm supposed to be able to do this?"  
  
"Well.it's going to take some time."  
  
"What good will it do?" Neo was asking sincerely, like a child.  
  
"If.if we can control the Matrix.we win. We take it back. We take all our people back."  
  
"What good does that do if.if that's the result?" He jerked a thumb towards the corridor, presumably where Astral's body lay wrapped.  
  
"Well.you.we'd win the war, Neo. It'd all be over." How did she explain to him that people died all the time here, and it never got any easier?  
  
"And then what?"  
  
Trinity didn't have an answer for him. She just stared into his eyes, feeling sadder than she possibly ever had before.  
  
"Maybe I'm not the One," Neo said with finality. "What then?"  
  
"You are the One, Neo." Trinity said with what she hoped was as much finality.  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
"Because-"  
  
"Because of Morpheus? What the fuck does Morpheus now?"  
  
"Dammit. Neo, you are the One, I know you are! Can't you just believe that?"  
  
Silence.  
  
"No," Neo said, smally, eventually. "Not really."  
  
He turned away from her and slumped back in his seat, staring at the coding. Trinity sighed and just left.  
  
--  
  
Morpheus stood in the darkened infirmary, where Dozer stood feeding the baby with a tiny bottle. She gurgled happily and snuggled up to the big bare arms, seeking warmth there.  
  
"How is he?" Morpheus looked over to where Mouse sat at Astral's body, unmoving.  
  
"I don't know, man. He won't come talk to me. He won't even see his baby." Dozer rocked the gurgling infant in his strong arms.  
  
Morpheus slowly walked over to where his white, frail charge sat glumly. "Mouse?" He laid a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder. There was no answer. "Mouse, I know how you feel. I do." Morpheus stroked Mouse's tense neck gently. "It's all right to feel the way you do. But you have to be there for your child."  
  
What seemed like forever later, Mouse looked up at Morpheus with shining eyes and the big captain was hit with the intensity of the emotion that radiated off the child. Years of abuse and sadness and frustration shocked Morpheus like a slap in the face. Mouse stared at him for a moment, then flicked his eyes over to where Dozer was tending to the baby, quickly, then back down at Astral's body.  
  
"I know you're scared," Morpheus muttered softly. "It's okay to be scared. It's normal. Mouse." The boy picked up one of Astral's heavy white hands and held it in his. Already cold. "You have to at least see your daughter. Name her."  
  
Mouse took in a deep, shaky breath. "We already did name her." His voice shook and cracked, tears spilt out of his eyes.  
  
Morpheus edged closer, still keeping one arm across the child's pale shoulders. "What name did you give her?"  
  
Mouse looked up at Morpheus, his face tear-stained, sobs racking up from deep within him. "Hope," He whispered, and Morpheus barely heard him.  
  
Then he was crying softly in Morpheus' arms, like he had countless times before- but those sobs had never held such intensity as they did now. 


	10. Chapter Ten

Chapter 10  
Going to your funeral and I'm feeling like a fool  
  
Know who's going to take the blame  
  
Thinking of the days of hanging out behind the school  
  
Everything goes away.  
  
-Eels "Going to Your Funeral Part I"  
  
The ship was going to Zion.  
  
It had been attacked by Squiddies at every turn; down every old sewage tunnel another AI controlled machine lurked. The Nebuchadnezzer had taken a different, longer route when Morpheus decided to go to Zion to foster off Mouse and Hope for a little while. The attacks stopped soon after, though, and the hovercraft was no longer dodging danger as it usually did.  
  
If you asked Cypher about it, though, he'd swear he didn't know a thing.  
  
"Hope, please." Mouse was in the infirmary, where it felt like he lived in the past week. His newborn baby wailed in his arms as he tried to calm her down so he could maybe get some sleep that night.  
  
Hope continued to cry and wail, however, and Mouse, for the life of him, just could not figure out why.  
  
Dozer entered the infirmary and took a seat by the pale, skinny boy and his crying infant child.  
  
"Problem?"  
  
"I fed her, and I changed her. I don't know why she won't calm down." The frustration was clear in Mouse's voice.  
  
Dozer reached out for the baby. "Give her to me." Mouse, shaking, handed Hope over to Dozer, who held her in the crook of one big arm, supporting her head. "You have to be gentle." Solid, steady arms rocked the baby back and forth. She calmed down, and gurgled up at Dozer happily.  
  
"She doesn't know me," Mouse said after a long, quiet moment. He wrung his pale hands in his lap.  
  
"Of course she does." Hope drifted off to sleep in the cradle of Dozer's arm. "You're her father."  
  
The word still sounded strange to Mouse. "Every time I touch her, she cries."  
  
You just have to learn how to handle her," Dozer tried to console Mouse. "She knows you're nervous and that makes her nervous."  
  
"Great."  
  
"Here," Dozer shifted his weight towards Mouse so as not to wake the baby. "Take her gently, support her head."  
  
Hope slept lazily in her father's arms. Mouse saw how little and light and fragile she was. He felt his heart rate increase and his breaths grow shallow.  
  
"I do love you, Hope, I do." He said, softly, apologetically. "You just.I'm afraid of you. A little. And every time I look at you.you look just like your mother." And every time I look at you, I see what killed her. "Jesus fuck, I can't do this." Mouse carefully handed the baby back to Dozer.  
  
"It's all right to be nervous." Dozer said quietly. "You know, Morpheus was nervous when you first came. He had to bounce you on his knee when you wouldn't calm down."  
  
Somehow, images of himself in Morpheus' place were not comforting. "Why did this have to happen to me?" He winced. His voice cracked a little.  
  
"Mouse?" A familiar voice was at the doorway of the infirmary. Neo hung back from entering completely. "Tank wants us to do a favour for him."  
  
".Can it wait?"  
  
"I don't think so. He says it's urgent."  
  
Mouse sighed. "Go on," Dozer, beside him, said. "I'll take care of Hope."  
  
--  
  
"Please? You guys have to. It'd mean so much to me.please?" Tank really didn't have the upper hand in this argument.  
  
Neo stood, his arms crossed, just staring coolly at Tank. Mouse sat on one of the terminals, staring at his hands. Tank looked at Mouse for a bit and sighed.  
  
"I know this is a really bad time to ask and everything, but.you guys, please. He's going to die if we don't do something!"  
  
"We can't just go in there and change everything," Neo said. "It's crawling with Agents. And behind Morpheus' back? That's only ever ended in heartache."  
  
Mouse didn't say anything. He pulled at his toque a little.  
  
"I'll be careful. No one will ever find out. And.okay, at the slightest sign of danger, I'll pull you guys out. All right?"  
  
"Why us?" Neo asked.  
  
"'Cause, well.he knows you, Mouse. Sort of. Astral was his best friend."  
  
Mouse looked away.  
  
"And you, Neo, you're-"  
  
"Don't even say it!" Neo drew back. "No. No. That's not true, what you were about to say. It's not going to happen."  
  
"Please!" Desperation was written all over Tank's face.  
  
"I don't wanna go back there." Mouse said, smally, and the other two men barely heard him. "I can't.I can't go back there. Not to Copenhagen."  
  
Tank approached the terminal slowly. "Mouse." He paused and waited until Mouse looked up at him, which took a while. "I know.I know it's difficult. I understand. I.you need to do this. He's going to die, and he was Astral's friend.she loved him, you know that."  
  
"I know.but."  
  
"I know it's hard for you, but she would have wanted you to.in fact, I think she would have begged and nagged too." Tank smiled, the kind of forced, desperate smile one smiles in these kind of discussions. "Please?"  
  
Mouse went back to staring at his pale, fragile hands. He shrugged. "I guess."  
  
--  
  
It was dark when they got there, and raining. Warm. Neo lost track of what season it was supposed to be, and where, inside the Matrix. He wondered vaguely if his family, the one he had left so long ago across several oceans, had noticed yet if he was missing, and if they cared. Time passed differently in the Real World then here. Perhaps they forgot he existed at all.  
  
Neo didn't say anything as Mouse led him up a narrow staircase in the dark, dirty apartment building in the center of the old city. It made him a little nervous, this depressing, sickly looking building. But then he remembered that it was not real, like he always had to force himself to do, and that made it a little better. A little.  
  
"Inger?" Mouse knocked on the door of one of the apartments.  
  
No answer was forthcoming. Mouse glanced up at Neo, and produced a credit card taken from the white room.  
  
The door opened to a dark, dank room. Blinds were drawn shut around the windows. The door to the messy, unmade bedroom was half open, like the teasing mouth of a dark cave where danger most likely lurks.  
  
Broken bottles littered the floor as the two walked in, slowly, leather creaking along with the floor.  
  
Huddled on the floor of the kitchen, shaking and clutching a curling broom, was Inger. His eyes were clenched shut, one of them swollen shut by bruises. Tears streamed down his bloody face, and his body wracked with the sobs that he refused to voice.  
  
"Inger?" Mouse started softly, stretching out a hand gently.  
  
The boy turned inhumanly fast, whipping the curling broom around him wildly.  
  
"Mouse?" His voice was small and scared and far away. "Is that.is that you?" Inger squinted painfully through his one good eye.  
  
"Yeah.yeah, it's me, Inger."  
  
"Who's that?" Inger held out the curling broom at Neo warily.  
  
"That's Neo. A friend." Mouse stepped forward carefully, still crouched a little. "Inger.what's going on?"  
  
Inger didn't seem capable of concentrating very long. "Where's Astrid?"  
  
Mouse swallowed down whatever response he was supposed to give to that, his hand shaking the littlest bit. "Inger, what's going on?"  
  
"He's going to kill me. He.he left a few hours ago, but he'll come back. He's going to kill me. I'm scared."  
  
"And you're going to defend yourself with that?" Mouse gestured warily at the curling broom clutched in Inger's hands.  
  
"Ye.yeah. Yes."  
  
"C'mon, Inger. Come with us." Neo said finally. He hadn't even realized how everyone was speaking Danish.  
  
"No! He'll find me and kill me and.I can't leave him."  
  
"I thought you said he stopped using for you." Mouse moved some old bottles out of the way nervously. "That's what Astrid told me, anyhow." He just let her name come out. Better not to think of her too hard.  
  
"He.I made him angry. He went on a bender. Jesus, Mouse, what am I going to do?" Mouse realized just now how bruised up and beaten Inger's face was, and how pointless all that anger must have been.  
  
"You'll come with us. We're taking you to Norway. You'll be safe there."  
  
"But I can't! There's nothing I can do, I can't get a job-"  
  
"Don't worry about it. We'll take care of you." Mouse wasn't as confident as he was trying to come off as, just being in Copenhagen was wearing his certainty down.  
  
"But.he'll find me. He will."  
  
"Inger! Don't worry about it. Trust me," Mouse reached out a hand, shaking almost as much as Inger's. For a moment he considered pulling back and running for the nearest payphone, leaving Inger behind in whatever squalor he was living in, leaving Astral's former world behind him forever. But he saw the pain in the Inger's eyes and remembered how Astral looked when she birthed his daughter and something inside him pinned his feet to the ground. "Come with us. Trust me."  
  
Inger stared at Mouse for a moment, slowly letting the curling broom down on the ground, and reluctantly took his hand.  
  
--  
  
The three were running up to catch a train when someone grabbed Inger from behind and threw him to the ground.  
  
"Thought you could get away from me, you little slut?" Sören's breath reeked of alcohol and his face was writ with fury and barely reined in bitterness.  
  
"Sören, I.please, don't!" Inger struggled to get up as Mouse and Neo ran back towards him.  
  
"Inger! Just get up and run!" Neo commanded. A train conductor had noticed the kafuffle and had come down from the platform to investigate.  
  
"Who the hell are you?" Sören demanded. "Stay out of this. He's mine."  
  
"I wouldn't be so sure if I were you, Mister Ibsen." A freakishly calm, familiar voice cut through the darkness. The conductor, now at Sören's arm, was suddenly tall, suited, and forbidding, raising a gun to the man's head.  
  
"What the fu-" Before anyone knew what was happening, Sören was dead.  
  
"No!" Inger screamed as Neo and Mouse both grabbed him and ran with inhuman desperation.  
  
Agent Smith watched them run. Let them go. They weren't really disturbing anything, anyway. He'd have his way soon enough.  
  
--  
  
"It's better this way. You'll see."  
  
Neo's words didn't seem to have an affect. Inger remained, his head bowed, leaned over the rail of the ferry that was shipping them across to Sweden. It was cold, but it didn't seem to bother the boy and Neo had since learned to manipulate his own body temps in the Matrix. Neo looked down at where Inger was looking, at a constant field of black murkiness, which was probably how his soul felt.  
  
How Neo felt before. Before he found the truth. But that hadn't really helped, either. Well. Better just to not think of that.  
  
"I know it hurts," He did, too. He had loved, once, and he would have liked to think he knew love now. But. "You'll see. You'll be happier now."  
  
"He took care of me." Inger's voice was barely audible. "What am I going to do now?"  
  
Neo glanced back at Mouse, who sat on a bench by a window revealing the ferry's casino bar inside. Mouse remained staring at a point somewhere near Neo's feet and didn't look up. "Well." Neo started. "You'll have to trust us. We'll set you up with people we know."  
  
"But.I.I loved him. I did. I know what you're going to say, but I did. I wish I dead." Inger still didn't raise his head.  
  
Neo glanced back again. "Mouse?" he said softly. "Do.can you come help?"  
  
Mouse looked up at Neo and the intensity of hate and anger in the boy's eyes scared Neo a bit.  
  
"Okay. Never mind." He went back to staring at the black ocean and patted a reassuring hand on Inger's back.  
  
"Inger?" A soft voice approached them from the side. Jolix stood, calmly, not nearly as towering and commanding of Morpheus, but the pale, gangly man had started getting the look right. "My name is Jolix. I'm a friend of Mouse, and Astrid's."  
  
The boy did look up at this, eyes shining, and looked at the jaunty captain carefully. "A.Astrid?"  
  
"Yes." Jolix took a step forward. Inger didn't flinch back. "I know what you're going through, Inger. It's all right. Trust us. We're taking you somewhere safe. You'll have a place to stay, and work, and you'll get your life back together."  
  
"Wh.where?"  
  
Jolix smiled. "A small town in Norway. It's all arranged."  
  
"But-"  
  
"Don't worry about anything." Jolix stepped forward again, and Inger still didn't back down. "Just have faith."  
  
Inger looked back at the only one there who was not a stranger. "Mouse?"  
  
Mouse looked up again, and this time his gaze was not filled with hate and anger.only pain. "Do as he says, Inger. It'll be okay." He shifted his gaze eventually to Neo, and without a word, got up and disappeared inside the ferry.  
  
Neo sighed and, casting only one last glance at Jolix and Inger, followed him.  
  
--  
  
Cypher shivered in the cold and gagged down some of Dozer's moonshine for warmth. He set his mug to the side and wrapped his tattered blanket around himself a little tighter.  
  
"I hate it here," He said to no one in particular, his words echoing ever so slightly in the darkness. His face was bathed with the green glow of the scrolling code, and Cypher sighed.  
  
He was alone. Story of his life. Everyone else was asleep, or he figured they were. It shouldn't have been that way, someone else should be awake somewhere just in case, but Cypher was beyond caring. He sighed and leaned back in his chair, settling down for the long night watch.  
  
A gentle cry came from somewhere down in the belly of the ship. Cypher looked over his shoulder slowly, listening. It came again, a little louder.  
  
Probably Mouse having another nightmare. Poor kid. Cypher adjusted his blanket a little and closed his eyes, settling down for a little rest.  
  
He heard it again, and opened his eyes bitterly. Geez, someone should go check on the kid, at least. He looked over his shoulder again, listening for any footsteps. Trinity or Switch usually did this, or at least got Morpheus. But no one was coming. Sleeping too deeply, probably. Assholes.  
  
Cypher sighed and got up slowly, sniffing in the cold. The wailing didn't stop, muffled by the distance in the metal corridors, echoing eerily.  
  
That wasn't no nightmare crying, either. Cypher heard it get louder as he got closer, more desperate more.constant. He suddenly felt himself break into a run, his blanket fell from his shoulders and remained in the hall. Geez. Geez! It didn't stop.  
  
Mouse wasn't asleep. He was standing in the middle of the infirmary, next to a swivel chair that had toppled over, just yelling. Screaming. Wailing. Whatever.  
  
"Mouse?" Cypher asked carefully, loud enough so the boy could hear him over his own voice.  
  
Mouse spun around, desperately, his face sticky with tears and discharge. "Oh, Jesus," He muttered, and scrambled underneath the incubator where his baby slept, still sobbing loudly. He stared at Cypher a little while and started wailing again, a long, high, wordless cry.  
  
"Mouse, Mouse, calm down, what's wrong?" Cypher stepped forward and looked into the incubator that the boy currently cowered under, where Hope lay silently under small grey blankets. He reached out slowly and touched her. Still. Cold.  
  
Oh.fuck.  
  
"Do something, Cypher!" Mouse had snapped, understandably, and he covered his face with his hands and yelled and cried and yelled. "Make her laugh, make her cry, do something!"  
  
"I.I." Cypher was panicking now too as he stared at Hope, lying eerily still, looking to all the world like a plastic baby doll, still and fake and.dead. Her arms were still stretched up, too, tiny, chubby fingers curled in ever so softly. Jesus, Jesus!  
  
"Please!" Now Mouse talked a lot, but god, Cypher had never heard him this loud before in his life. "Cypher, do something!"  
  
"Somebody help us, please?" Cypher yelled out into the darkness. They were too far from anybody to hear them, but he didn't want to leave the kid alone here. Who knows what would happen.  
  
Cypher felt a headache coming on as he knelt next to the wailing, crying boy. "Mouse," He reached out to touch the boy, who scrambled back with an intensity Cypher had never seen before.  
  
"Don't touch me! Help her! Hope! Hope!" The front of Mouse's sweater was almost completely wet, and he made no move to wipe his face.  
  
Cypher went to the doorway of the infirmary, trying to keep at least one eye on Mouse, yelling and kicking and making as much noise as he could. "Somebody, help! Now! Morpheus, Trinity, anyone! Neo!" He looked back and saw Mouse, strangely quiet, writhing on the floor. "Oh, Jesus," He ran back and pulled the boy out from under the incubator, turning him ever so slightly. Mouse was promptly sick all over Cypher.  
  
Mouse closed his eyes and cried softly, his breath coming now in small, short gasps. He looked as if he were about to pass out.  
  
"It's okay, it's okay, Mouse," Cypher actually wiped the sweat, tears and vomit from Mouse's face. Somebody had to do it. "Hey, listen to me. Mouse?"  
  
Mouse didn't respond except to start wailing anew, and collapse into Cypher's arms, burying his face into the balding man's shoulder. Oh, geez. The Truth. Christ. No one wanted this. Who the hell wanted this?  
  
"I-I.I fell asleep and.and-and.wh-when I woke up, she.she wouldn't." Mouse broke into loud, wailing tears and tightened his grip around Cypher's neck.  
  
"Shh, shh." Cypher held the boy for what seemed like eternity. He knew the others came eventually but he didn't look up at any of them, even when he felt them kneel down and try to comfort Mouse. Eventually he felt his own face and realized he was crying.  
  
The others were talking. Neo led Trinity off somewhere, weeping, probably so the both of them could be sick. Tank leaned up against a corner, one hand over his mouth, shocked. Too cold, someone said. Sudden death, someone else, Apoc probably, was crying softly. It happens. There was nothing they could do.  
  
Cypher felt eyes on him and he looked down at Mouse in his arms, looking up at him, eyes shining, the occasional wet streak running down his cheeks. "She died because I didn't love her enough," he said softly, simply.  
  
No, no, that's not true. That's what somebody else, anybody else, would have said. Cypher could only watch as Mouse closed his eyes and another bout of quiet sobs racked the undernourished body, and he curled back into Cypher's arms. There was nothing Cypher could say that would take away that pain. Nothing he could do. Why bother? Why make it worse?  
  
Besides. Perhaps it was the truth.  
  
The Truth. Huh. Fuck.  
  
They were gone now. The others. Cypher didn't know what they had done with Hope.  
  
Morpheus was still there. He sat on the floor across them and took Mouse from Cypher, who didn't resist. Mouse started crying loudly again, and twisted out of Morpheus' grasp, crawling back to hide under the incubator.  
  
"Mouse." Mouse turned his back to the two men and sat sobbing his pathetic little heart out. Morpheus moved forward slightly to the crying boy. "Mouse, please? I know. I know.there was nothing anyone could do. Don't blame yourself, Mouse." A new, almost mocking cry split the air. "Mouse, please, just." Morpheus fell silent and slowly turned his head to glare at Cypher, where he was still sitting.  
  
Cypher glared right back and left the room.  
  
He leaned against the wall, hugging himself, outside the door to the infirmary, listening to what he could. The rest of the ship was spookily quiet, sickeningly quiet.  
  
"Mouse.will you at least speak with me?"  
  
"Why?" Mouse sounded frighteningly like a child.  
  
"Because I care."  
  
"No you don't."  
  
"Yes, I." Morpheus sighed, sounding close to tears himself.  
  
"I wish I was dead." Mouse's voice was nasal from all the discharge.  
  
"Don't say that, Mouse, please," Morpheus was in tears now.  
  
"Why did she have to die? Why does everything." Cypher rubbed his temples. Jesus. Jesus.  
  
There was a long stretch of silence where Cypher felt his anger rise in his throat. Damn that Morpheus. Damn him. Asshole.  
  
"Mouse, I.we're going to stay out here for a while. I know how you feel, and I wish-"  
  
"What? Why?"  
  
"Trinity voiced her suspicion. It's been too quiet. It's too dangerous to go to Zion right now."  
  
Damn Trinity! Damn her!  
  
"But I.Hope.I have to."  
  
"We can have the ceremonies here, Mouse, it'll be all-"  
  
"No it won't! Jesus!" Mouse was yelling again. Cypher straightened as he heard Mouse's pained voice grow closer. "Why would you do this to me? You won't even let me bury them now? I do hate you! I do! No!" Cypher imagined that Morpheus approached Mouse at this point. "Fuck off! I hate you!" The boy's voice broke painfully and Cypher winced and turned away as he swept past him, weeping bitterly. Cypher watched the frail, pale, sobbing heap of bones stoop to pick up his discarded blanket as he went.  
  
Cypher stayed where he was, waiting for a moment. Wiping the last of the tears from his face, he carefully looked into the infirmary and saw Morpheus sitting, his head low, his arms hanging over his drawn up knees, on the side of the room. No Zion. Dammit. Could anything else possibly go wrong today?  
  
Cypher sighed and wrapped his arms around him and walked back to the Construct, trying not to think of Hope.  
  
Damn Morpheus. Damn him.  
  
He'd just have to get the bastard back in the Matrix. That's all. 


	11. Chapter Eleven

Chapter 11  
What will prove to be our big mistake?  
  
Short-sighted arrogance for what sake?  
  
Our families to ashes, our ambitions to dust  
  
Our progeny in silence thinking 'what about us?'  
  
- Bad Religion 'Victims of the Revolution'  
  
There was a disturbance in the Matrix- a sort of a soft spot that had resurfaced recently. It was almost just too small to go unnoticed as anything important by the Machines, possibly a busted circuit that somebody hadn't gotten around to checking.  
  
To the rebels, though, it served as a weak spot that could be used to their advantage. Hasty messages had been sent from ship to ship, until it was decided that the Nebuchadnezzer had the best crew to take care of it.  
  
It was still a secret, what had happened to Mouse's daughter. The Predator was the only other ship that even knew of Astral's pregnancy, though that sort of thing was usually shared joy, as the human population teetered vicariously on extinction. As of yet, nobody else even knew there had been a frail human life called Hope, and that flame of life had been put out by an unknown hand. It was like a twisted little family secret that the crew of the Nebuchadnezzer kept buried within them whenever confronted by other rebel ships.  
  
It had been two weeks. Mouse had immediately clammed up and spent his days alone in his room, where no one tried to bother him.  
  
"I worry about him," Trinity had said to Neo once, softly, softly enough so Morpheus couldn't hear, because he was the last person who needed to hear it. Neo looked at her a moment and wondered a little if she meant Mouse or Morpheus. Morpheus had thrown himself completely into his work, losing the demeanour of the well-rounded, serene leader he once had. He stayed up nights planning the raid, making sure it was flawless, training Neo to the point of exhaustion. And Neo stood there and took it all, trying not to waiver, trying not to flinch, while everybody else felt sorry for him.  
  
Until one day, Mouse came out of his room.  
  
He simply walked out and into the mess hall, draped in his uniform tight black sweater, his toque pulled down low over his forehead.  
  
There was silence as soon as he came in, slouching, pale, almost exactly the same way he was so long ago, when he was still a boy. Everyone watched like a hawk as he took a bowl of runny, tasteless porridge and sat at the bland metal table.  
  
"What?" He said flippantly, more in tune with his former self.  
  
"Mouse, are.how are you?" Dozer tried to sound neutral.  
  
"I'm fine," Mouse glanced around, pointedly missing Morpheus' gaze. "I'm okay, really. Don't.please don't worry about me," He fingered one frostbitten ear slowly. "I'm fine now."  
  
Morpheus leaned back a little suspiciously. Then, maybe to give Mouse a little space in order to speak to him later, he changed the subject. The weak spot, or the hot spot as they had taken to calling it, was scheduled, according to Dozer and Tank's mathematical manipulations of the past events, to erupt today.  
  
"The whole thing seems strange to me," Trinity broke in, eventually, after Morpheus' briefing the crew. "It seems a little.well, not convenient. I mean, there are disturbances like that all over the Matrix, but they're centralized to certain parts, they make more sense. In that part of the world, something on this scale doesn't happen that often, so randomly. It seems.wrong."  
  
Cypher realized that Mouse had been staring at him. He locked eyes with the boy, who stared back, and eventually smiled a long, slow smile.  
  
"I know it appears odd," Morpheus said. "But we've got to take every chance we're given. If we can destroy even the smallest part of their system, compromise their control the littlest bit- it will be worth it." He gave Trinity a small, enigmatic smile. "I'm asking you all to trust me,"  
  
"You know we trust you, Morpheus," Tank said optimistically.  
  
"Thank you, Tank." Morpheus leaned back and was silent a moment, mostly watching Mouse, who had gone back to quietly eating his porridge without complaint. "Now, why don't you all go prepare?"  
  
Mouse quickly wiped his mouth and was out of the room before Morpheus could stop him, chasing after Cypher who had left even quicker.  
  
"You know something, don't you?" The boy said when they were alone. "You know what's going on."  
  
"I have no idea what you're talking about, kid."  
  
"You're up to something. I'm not stupid," Mouse spat at him. "Tell me what's going on."  
  
"Mouse, I think you need to take a break-"  
  
"I'm serious, Cypher, if you're up to something, I want in."  
  
Cypher and Mouse stared at each other a little bit, before Cypher broke away, smothering a little laugh. "No. No way. You're crazy."  
  
"Just tell me something," Mouse stepped in front of Cypher, cornering the man before he could leave. "What are the chances that those of us who go on this mission will come back alive?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"They killed my daughter, Cypher." Mouse said it with all the intensity of a grown man, his voice remained steady and unbreaking, his demeanor was not shaken by unshed tears. He was serious. "Just tell me."  
  
Cypher didn't answer for a long time. When he did, he only managed a nervous gulp.  
  
Mouse treated him to another one of those cocky, long, slow smiles.  
  
"That's what I thought," He said knowingly before turning on his heel and walking out with a conduct that hadn't been with him since he'd been married. He seemed like he had come alive again.  
  
Cypher watched him go and realized that, even if no one could see if but him, Mouse was already dead inside.  
  
--  
  
"I don't think I want you to come with us on this mission," Morpheus said softly. Mouse didn't look up from what he was doing, cleaning off some of the terminal instruments for Tank.  
  
"Why not?" He asked, his rag still making rhythmic movements across the port.  
  
"It isn't good to jump right back into these things after.I want you to take some more time off. Rest a bit. I'm worried about you, little one." Mouse had stopped cleaning and was staring at the port now. "I think it would be best if you stayed aboard with Tank and Dozer."  
  
"But.no!" Mouse looked up at Morpheus and the older man realized how much the boy's eyes had changed. "I.I want to go, Morpheus, please. Please let me come."  
  
"Mouse, I-"  
  
"I.I want to help. I want to keep going. I need to get my life back, Morpheus. Please?"  
  
"I'm not putting you in any more danger." Mouse was still Morpheus' child, at least the latter was having problems getting beyond that. The last ten months had created a rift between the two that Morpheus wished he could fix.  
  
"I know! I know, I.I understand that. I do. Look, I'll stay at the touchdown, too.you can go with Neo and Trinity and Cypher to the hot spot, and Apoc and Switch can stay on the ground, and I'll stay inside with the backup gear as a contact, okay?" He looked up at Morpheus and smiled, though it didn't reach his eyes, and hoped his guardian would say yes.  
  
Morpheus sighed. "If you promise to stay out of trouble and do as you're told." He regarded his charge sadly, resisting the urge to stroke the boy's brow the way he did when Mouse was a child clinging to his neck.  
  
Mouse surprised him. He smiled again, almost for real, and hugged him.  
  
"Thank you," Mouse said, though the gratitude was tinged with a shaky, doubtful voice. Morpheus chalked it up to his constant worry and buried the boy in his huge hug, planting the occasional kiss on Mouse's toque.  
  
He had done the best he could.  
  
--  
  
It had been a bust. The area imploded- there was a riot that they couldn't stop, too much destruction to keep count of.  
  
They had saved lives- Neo had snatched several children out of the way of burning effigies or canisters of tear gas. He had been struck with an immense sense of uselessness, however, when he realized that they'd be stuck living in slavery anyhow.  
  
Several buildings had been destroyed, however, which made for several of the controlling AI systems down. Other rebel groups had been poised in the real world to take advantage of the downtime- but it wasn't enough, it wasn't what they had planned for.  
  
Morpheus was disappointed, Neo could feel it in the air as they drove back to the contact point. A dense silence filled the air, and Neo kept glancing up at the big, forbidding man with apprehension.  
  
The words of the Oracle, given him so long ago, came shuddering back and Neo was suddenly nervous.  
  
"It's not enough that I believe in you, is it, Neo?" Morpheus' eyes couldn't be seen behind his sunglasses.  
  
Neo stared at him and was about to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, when he felt Trinity's slender hand find his own on the seat between them. He glanced at her, but she was staring out the window.  
  
--  
  
"Don't worry about it," Apoc said for the seventeenth time that day, as Switch glanced up and behind her at the building. "He's fine,"  
  
"I can't just not worry," Switch sighed. "He shouldn't have come. He should be.in bed or something."  
  
"Mouse'll be fine. He needs to get some semblance of normalcy back. You can't just expect him to stagnate in that room of his forever." Switch didn't answer. Apoc sighed a little and moved closer to her. "I know you're worried, but you got to let go sometime. He'll get through this. He's a pretty together kid."  
  
"Yeah.yeah, you're right."  
  
"I'm always right."  
  
"Weird."  
  
"What?"  
  
"That's the third white van I've seen."  
  
--  
  
Mouse, for his part, was not all right, and he was definitely not together. He pretended to be, for everyone else's sake, to stop the patronizing glances and worried whispers.  
  
He sat in the old, worn leather chair up in the rundown office building, feet on the table, staring at a conjured magazine of the woman in red.  
  
His heart wasn't in it.  
  
Instead, what was there was a growing, gnawing blackness that had ceased trying to get out, that turned itself inward until it consumed him completely.  
  
He had tried to stop it. Mouse didn't want it to come to this. That morning, when he had spoken with Morpheus, when they hugged for the first time in ever, he wanted to say something about it. He wanted to stop it. He wanted to apologize.  
  
The words just wouldn't come.  
  
He had tried, after that, to find Trinity and say it to her, too, he tried to say it to everyone. But the empty blackness had kept him grounded where he was cleaning the terminals, or in his room alone in darkness.  
  
He was sorry.  
  
His cellular rang- "They're on their way," Tank told him.  
  
There was a sinking feeling in the small of his back, but it didn't bother him too much. He felt it grow stronger when his phone rang the second time as he reached for the curtains- it wasn't a surprise. He wanted to be shocked by it, he wanted to act like it was a surprise.but he had known all along. Since he had locked eyes with Cypher over breakfast in the mess- since their one-sided conversation. Mouse knew all along, and it didn't really bother him.  
  
Somehow, he wished it did.  
  
Then there was the rumble of running feet, and the staccato of gunfire.  
  
Mouse may have screamed. He wasn't too sure.  
  
Epilogue  
  
Where would I be  
  
Without your love?  
  
Where would I be  
  
Without your arms around me?  
  
-Cake 'Where Would I Be?'  
  
Tank stared at his brother's grave, unmoving, his face unreadable. The captain of the hovership Predator stood a little ways behind him, waiting for when he was needed.  
  
"You haven't said anything in a while." Trinity said softly. Neo stood next to her on the edge of the overcrowded cemetary. Makeshift tombstones marked the final resting place of the countless fallen of Zion.  
  
The city had grown silent, eventually. The Nebuchadnezzer had floated home to welcoming throngs of encited masses. To them, the shotgun had gone off at a turning point in the war. It was their "Battle of Seattle"- the new revolution had certainly begun. No one knew how long it was going to take, but they had found their hero, and they gave him a hero's welcome.  
  
"You're a hero to them now. We'll win this. You'll see."  
  
Neo didn't answer. Something dark and angry inside him kept eating at his heart, and didn't stop. Some accusing voice telling him he was worthless and opportunistic. That for all his power, he couldn't save them all. Switch. Apoc. Dozer.  
  
Mouse.  
  
"You were his hero, too." Trinity said, softly, wistfully, and neither of them had to mention his name.  
  
It was warm in Zion, even at night. A little balmy for Neon's pseudo- Canadian sensitivies. A humid, encompassing heat welled up from the center of the Earth, not too far away. It felt weird to not be draped in blankets.  
  
Neo shifted a little and leaned into Trinity more, trying not to think about how Mouse was finally sleeping in warmth.  
  
--  
  
He had failed.  
  
He had been trusted with a young human life, the most precious kind of life left in the Now, and he had failed. He had failed so badly as to put the rest of his remaining crew in danger, to encourage the young man with potential to save them all to sacrifice himself. He had failed.  
  
The dank, warm and humid air down in the Earth's belly created a dark atmosphere of helplessness and angst. Zion itself was quiet, settled down for the night, watch fires flickering in the distance. Barely, if one listened hard enough, the sound of small, bare feet pattering into tiny hovels of homes.  
  
He felt a human presence more than he heard it approaching behind him. Morpheus didn't turn when whoever it was sat beside him, where he kept a vigil watch over the new grave.  
  
"It's not your fault, you know." A deep accent that was faintly familiar turned his head. A young girl was there, smiling shyly, a little sadly at him. "This is war. There are always casualties in war."  
  
"If one child dies, it is not worth it." Morpheus replied, his voice low and soft.  
  
"But children have died since this started. They die inside the Matrix, suffering, in a double slavery. It'll be like that until this is over. Soon. You'll see." She leaned forward and drew her hands over the dingy plaque rising out of the barren, clayey earth.  
  
Mouse  
  
Astral  
  
Hope  
  
"Suffer the children to come to me, for of such is the kingdom of God."  
  
-Matthew 19:14  
  
"Then their deaths won't be in vain. She would have wanted it that way. They all would've."  
  
"Who are you." It was less a question than a command.  
  
"They call me Gretel. Like from the Fairy Tale." Another faint, sad smile. "She saved the day in the end." Gretel turned when she heard her captain, Jolix, calling her name. "You were her hero, Morpheus," She said hurriedly. "I never understood before, but..." Gretel trailed off, and gave him a quick, low hug, the kind Mouse gave when he was very young. Then she ran off to her captain's side.  
  
Morpheus turned back to the grave of his youngest charge, to the grave where the remains of his little boy slept alongside the ashes of his wife and child.  
  
He died because I didn't love him enough. The unexpected, accusatory, bitter thought flitted through his mind.  
  
Humanity's newest war had begun. But all wars, Morpheus realized with horror, were fought with the lives of children.  
  
For the first time since he could remember, Morpheus started to cry.  
  
End. 


End file.
